The Trudeau government has acknowledged for the first time that it launched a national security review of the Chinese-owned TikTok platform last year.
The revelation comes on the heels of the passage of a bill to ban TikTok from the United States unless the China-based owner, ByteDance, sells off its share in the company. The bill passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday and is now before the Senate.
Should it pass there, U.S. President Joe Biden says he will sign off on the ban.
Asked for the Canadian government’s position on the app, a spokesperson for Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne declined to comment.
When asked if the Trudeau government was considering implementing measures akin to the recent American bill, Champagne’s office said that it had already “issued an order for the national security review of TikTok Canada” on Sept. 6, 2023, according to a Canadian Press report.
This was the first time the existence of such a review was acknowledged by Canadian officials.
While details about the review were scant, Champagne’s office did confirm that the review was based on the expansion of a business which would constitute the establishment of a new Canadian entity.
Details of the review cannot be made available online as a routine matter of confidentiality under the Investment Canada Act, noted Champagne’s office, but added that TikTok would be the subject of “enhanced scrutiny.”
TikTok will be reviewed under a newly introduced Liberal policy on foreign investments in the interactive digital media sector that was implemented earlier this month.
According to the new policy statement, “hostile state-sponsored or influenced actors may seek to leverage foreign investments in the interactive digital media sector to propagate disinformation or manipulate information in a manner that is injurious to Canada’s national security.”
The Liberals say that the review is not in relation to the proposed U.S. bill however, which cites concerns over ByteDance’s obligations to potentially be forced to hand over any data from the app to the Chinese government should they demand it.
Chinese security laws dictate that Chinese businesses and organizations must comply with the communist government’s intelligence gathering efforts.
A survey conducted by Toronto Metropolitan University found almost 30% or Canadian respondents had TikTok accounts.
