In November 2024, the Canadian government ordered ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, to stop its operations in Canada because of national security concerns. As a result, TikTok’s offices in Toronto and Vancouver were shut down, and hundreds of local jobs were lost. However, Canadians can still access the TikTok app and upload content.
The decision to close TikTok’s operations in Canada came after a thorough review by Canada’s security and intelligence agencies. François-Philippe Champagne, the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Industry, mentioned that the government was “taking action to address the specific national security risks related to ByteDance Limited’s operations in Canada.”
Canada removes TikTok from government-issued devices
The same national security concerns that led to actions in the U.S. led to a ban of TikTok on federal and provincial government phones in Canada. Premier Doug Ford went further, ordering all members of his Ontario PC caucus to remove the app from their personal phones in March 2023.
The Canadian Press reported on March 14 that the federal government had ordered a national security review of the app, though Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne later said parents should not worry about their children using TikTok.
However, the government hasn’t completely cut ties with TikTok. Bednar pointed out that the government continued to spend over a million dollars on ads in 2022 to 2023 on a social media platform it had removed from government devices.
Will Canada ban TikTok?
Mai mentioned that there is little interest in Canada for a full TikTok ban, especially because influencers in Canada use the platform for viewership.
With a U.S. TikTok ban, Canada may follow suit, Bednar said.
“We’re definitely a follower country,” she said, “And I think it would be hard for us to explain why we’re not doing the same thing when our American neighbor is taking a particular stance.”
The icon for the video-sharing TikTok app is seen on a smartphoneBut even if Canada bans TikTok, it wouldn’t fix the issue of how companies handle or mishandle user data, Bednar said. No major social media platform has ever been fully transparent about who has access to user data.
Even platforms that seem harmless can have “secret vulnerabilities,” she explained, mentioning how Strava, a fitness app for runners, accidentally revealed the location of U.S. military bases in Syria.
A TikTok ban could suggest that users are putting Canada’s national security at risk, Bednar said, but the larger issue is about data security, which is separate.
“Really, there’s just this problem with privacy and information and who it’s being shared with,” she said.
“Other than the connection to the Chinese government, American social media apps behave in very similar ways when it comes to how greedy they are with data.”
Who stands to gain from a TikTok ban?
TikTok’s rivals on social media — both U.S. and Chinese-owned platforms — could benefit from a ban in the U.S. According to a Financial Times report from Wednesday, Alphabet Inc., the owner of YouTube, and Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Instagram and Facebook, along with Snap and X, could see a huge increase in advertising revenue in the billions if TikTok were banned in the U.S. Chinese social media platforms like RedNote and Lemon8 have seen a rise in new users recently, with Lemon8 gaining millions of new users this week.