Article content

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 shoved 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.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Stephen Harper’s northern tour ends with ugly tussle between Chinese reporter and PM's RCMP security detail Back to video

She corrected me several times, so I pushed her

Moments later Li was being hustled by three Mounties to the back of the room, a large steel warehouse. Eyewitnesses saw Li shove PMO staffer Julie 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.”