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During testimony Friday before the Foreign Interference Commission, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs David Morrison admitted he saw the intimidation of Michael Chong and his family by the People's Republic of China as "legitimate diplomacy", although CSIS deemed it foreign interference.

Following a theme of Morrison's creative use of language, under examination by lawyer for Michael Chong, Gib van Ert, Morrison also described the ongoing Uyghur genocide in China as "activities."

Morrison explained his view that the targeting and information collection of Chong by China's spy agency could be nothing more than "tit-for-tat" economic sanctions legal under international law.

Records produced by Van Ert showed Morrison trying to explain China's foreign interference directed at parliamentarians as a simple failure of the PRC to understand Canadian democracy.

Van Ert called the excuse "totally infantilizing of a country which, by all accounts, all the witnesses that have come before us, is a sophisticated, powerful, complex adversary.... capable of taking on board the sorts of things that 12-year-olds all over this country learn about how the democratic process works in this country."

"China feels totally misunderstood, that is my professional opinion," Morrison testified.

Van Ert relied on the commissioner, Justice Marie Hogue, multiple times to prompt Morrison to answer his questions.

Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei, who reportedly played a role in attempts to gather information on Chong's family in Hong Kong in 2021 following the MP's condemnation of Beijing's conduct in the Xinjiang region as genocide, was deported from Canada as persona non grata (PNG) in 2023.