Canadian Government Orders Shutdown of TikTok’s Local Operations

While TikTok’s fortunes could be looking up in the U.S., it’s still facing various challenges in other regions related to cybersecurity and foreign interference concerns.

This week, the Canadian government has issued an order that TikTok dissolve its Canadian business, citing national security risks.

As explained by Canadian Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne:

“The Government of Canada has ordered TikTok Canada, so the operations of TikTok, the offices that they have in Vancouver and in Toronto, to be disbanded. What is important for Canadians to know [is] we’re talking about the operations [of TikTok], not the application. The application of TikTok will be available to Canadians as they want.”

So Canada is not going so far as the U.S., in pushing for a full sell-off of the app to separate it from its Chinese ownership, while the app won’t be banned for regular users.

But Canada is forcing TikTok staff out of the nation, due to unspecified national security concerns:

“The decision we took was to protect the national security of Canada on the basis of the analysis that we conducted with our security services, and we came to the conclusion that these activities that were conducted that were conducted in Canada by TikTok at their offices would be injurious to national security.”

Canadian officials haven’t released any details of TikTok’s violations, which would also be considered sensitive information on national security grounds. But the basis here is that the Canadian Government has concerns about the way in which TikTok has conducted itself seemingly in regards to the information being shared back to its Chinese homeland, and not in respect to the information being distributed to Canadians in the app.

Canada banned TikTok from all government devices early last year, following the lead of various other nations that have raised concerns about potential spying activity. At the time, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that this “may be the first step” in working to protect Canadians from potential risk via the app, with TikTok presenting “an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.”

Though again, Canadian officials have been tight-lipped about the specifics of the risks posed in this respect. U.S. officials have also shared little information of the specifics of TikTok’s national security risk, with much of the information either redacted and/or held back to protect the integrity of their investigations.

But the bottom line is that Canadian officials, the same as those in various other nations, have concerns with the way in which TikTok could be sharing Canadian user data back to its Chinese homeland. Though, then again, this action wouldn’t stop TikTok from doing such, it just removes TikTok’s own staff from the nation.

Which seems somewhat redundant, or maybe the risks posed are just not clear enough to understand this exact move.

For its part, TikTok Canada says that it will challenge the move in court, in an effort to remain in the nation.   

“The TikTok platform will remain available for creators to find an audience, explore new interests and for businesses to thrive.”

It is a bit of a strange action, in removing TikTok staff from the region, but not limiting the app itself.

Does that mean that TikTok’s Canadian staff were working to find vulnerabilities in Canada’s systems from their Canadian office? Were they looking to influence local businesses or officials directly?

And if that’s the case, why can’t they do that from somewhere else?

Either way, it’s another challenge for the app, which is also still facing a sell-off bill in the U.S., which may be overturned by President Elect Donald Trump.

Yet, even with that, TikTok will still be facing similar challenges in several other regions.