Trudeau government’s messaging around TikTok shutdown in Canada is ‘weird,’ tech expert says – NOW Toronto

A Toronto tech expert is questioning Ottawa’s decision to ban TikTok’s operations in the country due to “national security concerns,” instead of stopping Canadians from using the social media app. 

In a statement released on Wednesday, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne said the decision to shut it down was made in light of “specific national security risks related to ByteDance Ltd.’s operations in Canada through the establishment of TikTok Technology Canada, Inc.”

ByteDance is the Chinese IT company that created TikTok.

Champagne says “a multi-step national security review process” is what prompted the government to take action, though he did not specify the nature of the security threat; an omission that Brett Caraway, associate professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information & Technology at University of Toronto, identified as “weird.”

TikTok Canada said on Wednesday that ordering it to wind down operations was “not in anyone’s best interest” and that it will destroy hundreds of well-paying jobs. 

“We will challenge this order in court,” the statement concluded.

While Caraway, who is involved in consultations with the government about creating appropriate cyber security laws, said he couldn’t speak to its rationale, he told Now Toronto that “general concerns” have been raised in the United States and Canada about TikTok’s “governance structure” with regard to the relationship between ByteDance and the Chinese government, which he says could be contributing factors in the Canadian government’s decision to order a shutdown.

But he also says the actual reason has not been sufficiently addressed, despite threats of national security being a matter of public interest.

“I don’t think that the statement that we received from the minister gives us any real answer,” Caraway said, adding that it is crucial to question what TikTok may be doing that platforms, such as Meta, are not. 

He also argues that closing down TikTok’s Canadian branch diminishes the government’s ability to regulate around and legislate on its operations, which he says is a much more effective way to uphold security.

“Part of what you were doing as a regulator is trying to look out for the best interest of the Canadian citizen [meaning] you would prefer to have representatives of that platform doing business in Canada. That gives you oversight,” he explained.

While the government has made it clear there is cause for concern, Carraway says it is odd that the platform will remain available to users and content creators. 

“With respect to the weird signal that the Canadian government is giving…which is to say there’s something bad going on, according to the minister…but not bad enough to ban the platform, just the company…that strikes me as very strange,” he continued.

“I’m asking myself how does that make a Canadian safer? If they can still engage with the platform, and you’re not disrupting that, then what does it mean to dissolve Tik Tok Canada?,” he continued.

In the meantime, Caraway says it is important for Canadians to remain vigilant while using social media and to assume that your information is being harvested by a platform that will “package and sell it to a marketing aggregator.”

Said platforms may also track your location, what websites you’re looking at, how long you’re looking at them and your engagement patterns.

The government’s order to close TikTok’s operations in the country comes after the U.S. government voted to ban the social media platform if ByteDance fails to sell the app by January 2025, due to fears that China could access Americans’ data or surveil them with the app.