“Re Sheila McCook's review of CTV's ‘New Year's Day Conversation with the Prime Minister’ (Citizen, Jan. 2), which she found ‘boring and overly civil,’ and containing nothing new: The program contained the most explicit statement to date of the degree to which the prime minister is willing to tailor government measures to meet opposition points of view. Most of the newspapers I have read since the program did not miss this point, nor did some of the commentators such as the Globe and Mail's George Bain, who found enough meat in the program for a full column. In like vein, the Toronto Star published the complete transcript of the discussion.

There were a number of important observations by Mr. Trudeau of great interest to people who are more interested in knowing what he thinks than in a contrived confrontation.

• ‘Boring and overly civil’: This program was billed as a conversation, and not as a cross-examination. We asked the questions; I respected the guest's right not to answer, or to answer as much or as little as he wished, trusting the audience to form its own judgments about his responses.

It is no part of an interviewer's business to harass a guest, or to repeat endlessly questions which have been put once. As for being overly civil, may Carole Taylor and I, and for that matter everyone else in this business, be often found guilty of this regrettably rare offence. Bruce Phillips, Ottawa Bureau Chief, CTV News.”

Ouch.