Chinese journalist scuffles with PM’S staff
Row over question leads to shoving match
RAGLAN MINE, QUEBEC — The final public event on Stephen Harper’s annual summer tour was very nearly derailed Friday after a journalist from China’s state-owned newspaper got into a shoving match with a female staffer from the Prime Minister’s Office and was pulled away by members of Harper’s security detail.
The incident occurred during a question-and-answer session with the media, after the formal portion of the announcement at Raglan Mine, in Quebec’s far northwest, had ended. As the prime minister was taking a question from the CBC’s James Cudmore, People’s Daily Canada bureau chief Li Xue Jiang began insisting to PMO staffer Julie Vaux that he was next in line to ask a question.
Moments later Li was being hustled by three Mounties to the back of the room, a large steel warehouse. Eyewitnesses saw Li shove Vaux twice during the altercation. In an interview later, he claimed she had shoved him first. But he acknowledged pushing her. “I was in the line. She corrected me several times, so I pushed her,” Li said.
“We’ll be raising the matter with the Press Gallery, and Mr. Li should apologize immediately,” the PMO’s communications director, Andrew MacDougall, tweeted later. “Agree or disagree with how things are run, there was no excuse for Mr. Li to get physical with our staff.”
Asked whether he would apologize, Li said: “They should apologize to me, for being not fair. For depriving my right to ask questions.”
Harper was visiting Raglan to trumpet a $750,000 federal investment in wind power generation for the remote nickel mining site. Li had wanted to ask Harper to clarify Canada’s foreign investment regulations, he said, in light of China’s state-owned CNOOC’s takeover of Calgary-based Nexen last winter.
Earlier, it had been agreed among the pool of reporters travelling with Harper — among them journalists from CBC, Radio-Canada, the Toronto Star, CTV, The Canadian Press, Global, Sun Media and Postmedia — that Li would ask one of five questions allowed by the PM in Friday’s media availability.
It is Harper’s practice to limit the number of questions he takes from reporters — typically on this trip, four from the national media, one from any local media present, and one from Radio-Canada. Because of the limit on questions, reporters typically pool their efforts, and also determine by consensus who will pose them, and in what order. Questions are not shown to PMO staff in advance.
However, when the reporters’ list of questioners went back to the PMO, word came back that Harper would not take a question from Li. Throughout this six-day swing through the far North — Harper’s eighth as prime minister — Li and another Chineselanguage journalist, Xinhua news bureau chief Dacheng Zhang, have complained they were being unfairly kept away
Li was unhappy on Wednesday that he was not among those boated out by Zodiak to the deck of the Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in the harbour of Gjoa Haven on King William Island, to hear a briefing by the prime minister and others about ongoing efforts to locate the remains of the lost Franklin Expedition.
PMO staff said the spots on the Zodiaks were limited and a majority of reporters agreed with the decision to restrict access to Canadian media for that event.
Both Chinese journalists have made a habit during the trip of photographing and interviewing their colleagues, as well as taking numerous photos of the interior of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s C130J aircraft.
Such images are public and not subject to any security restrictions.
Asked whether he relays any information or photographs he gathers in the course of his work in Canada to the Chinese government, Li said he does not.
“No, just my paper,” he said.