The TikTok logo at the video hosting service’s UK office in London, England, on Feb. 9, 2022. (Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images)
By Michael Taube
Commentary
TikTok, the popular social media platform founded in 2016, has been one of the world’s fastest growing companies. The short-form videos circulated on this hosting service, including practical jokes, dance moves, and personalized statements about political, economic, and social issues, is popular with children and adults alike.
At the same time, there have been growing safety, security, and privacy concerns with TikTok due to the seemingly cozy relationship between its Chinese owner, ByteDance Ltd., and China’s Communist Party. U.S. Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, in a June 24 letter to the CEOs of Apple and Google, depicted ByteDance as being “beholden” to China and “required by law to comply with surveillance demands” issued by the Communist government.
Several countries, including India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, have either permanently or temporarily banned TikTok for general use or in government agencies. The United States has also taken a strong stance. Former president Donald Trump issued executive orders in July and August 2020 to ban TikTok and force ByteDance to either sell or spin-off its U.S.-based business. (The three orders were ultimately rescinded by President Joe Biden.) On Dec. 14, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, authored by Republican Senator Josh Hawley.
Other countries are moving in a sloth-like fashion with TikTok, however. This includes Canada.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in a Dec. 15 scrum on Parliament Hill: “I think people are concerned about TikTok. I think people are obviously watching very carefully.” He also said the Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s foreign signals intelligence agency, “is one of the best cyber security agencies in the world and they’re watching very carefully.”
If the PM’s best response is to say that TikTok is being watched “very carefully” not once, but twice, you can safely assume it’s nearly a zero as a major government priority. That should give Canadians pause.
It’s no secret that Trudeau has rarely taken a tough stance against China since becoming Prime Minister in 2015. The list of inaction and incredulous actions is unusually long.
A surprising lack of support for Hong Kongers in their quest for freedom, for instance. The PM and his cabinet abstaining twice from voting on motions declaring China had committed genocide against the Uyghurs. Ottawa’s approval of an under-the-radar partnership between Canada and a little-known Chinese vaccine manufacturer, CanSino Biologics, to unsuccessfully produce a COVID-19 vaccine. The two Michaels (Spavor and Kovrig) languished in a Chinese prison for over 1,000 days while the Canadian government walked on eggshells throughout the entire process.
The PM’s good work with the United States in Meng Wanzhou’s extradition case and banning China’s Huawei Technologies’s 5G network in Canada due to its longstanding ties with the communist government was shattered when he refused to put an end to several Canadian universities’ working relationship with Huawei on research and development projects.
More recently, the Liberals have been dragging their heels after a stunning and revealing Global News report related to Chinese interference in the 2019 federal election. The allegations included financial payments to at least 11 federal candidates and “numerous Beijing operatives” who worked in Liberal campaign offices.
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, two of Trudeau’s closest allies in his cabinet, both gave milquetoast responses and tons of shoulder shrugging about foreign interference during their recent testimonies at the House of Commons procedure and affairs committee. With respect to the candidates’ identities, Joly said, “I don’t have any form of information.”
Conservative MP Michael Cooper, one of the committee members, was frustrated with their responses. He brought up a Feb. 21, 2020, foreign intelligence briefing that described an “effective interference network” and reported investigations into “activities linked to the Canadian federal election in 2019. “How can the minister claim that she doesn’t know, that she has no knowledge,” Cooper asked.
Silence in Liberal Ottawa is golden, it seems.
While all of this may help explain why Trudeau isn’t doing much with respect to TikTok, it doesn’t justify his government’s inaction whatsoever.
U.S. Democrats, who are a natural left-leaning political ally to Canada’s Liberals, had obviously looked into this matter “very carefully,” to use the PM’s words. They were clearly concerned about TikTok being a safety and security threat in their country. They worked with Republican Senate colleagues in a political environment that’s more ideologically rigid than Canada’s and unanimously banned Tiktok on government devices.
Trudeau could surely do the same thing with Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and the other party leaders. The fact that he won’t move the hands on the parliamentary clock with TikTok should lead Canadians of all political stripes to seriously consider if his time in politics is finally up.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of NTD Canada.