Ordering TikTok to cease Canadian operations signals a rough future
The federal government’s most recent sign of international allegiance widens an already chasmic diplomatic gap with China
Stop me if you heard this one before — a western government wants to shut down TikTok because of alleged security concerns.
It was big news last year lasting all the way to this summer before losing popular attention. Now, the TikTok question is making a minor comeback as the Canadian federal government has ordered the company to end its operations here.
As reported by CTV News, this decision came “after a national security review of the Chinese company behind the social media platform, but stopped short of ordering people to stay off the app.”
A spokesperson for TikTok stated the company plans on legally challenging this near ban.
It goes without saying that China-Canada relations have been rocky for the past few years. From interference allegations in two federal elections, claims that Chinese embassies were being used as secret, overseas police stations, and the “spy balloon” incident to conspiracies about COVID-19 being an engineered bioweapon to weaken the western world, a slew of geopolitical issues and disputes that have frayed relations across the Pacific.
The most immediate impetus for the current state of affairs has been — and will once again be — Donald Trump. As often as the media raises alarms of Trump’s rhetorical admiration for Xi Jinping, they often fail to remember that actions speak louder than words. Namely, triggering a trade war with China via tariffs and sanctions.
What does this have to do with Canada? For as long as Canada has been a U.S.-allied state, it has also toed the line. Canada is very close — and not just geographically — to the world’s largest economy and sole global hegemon. Naturally, it will find itself entangled in its neighbour’s foreign policy escapades — like it or not.
From joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from the get-go to accepting the U.S.’s designated enemies as our own, whatever the hegemon says, Canada mostly goes along with it. That is where Canada stands with China, going so far as to impose its own tariffs on Chinese goods.
Considering how Canada does little, if anything, to buck this trend or forge its own diplomatic path that strays too far from the U.S., there does not appear to be any immediate appetite for disentanglement.
Demanding that TikTok shutter operations in Canada falls comfortably into that lean towards continental conformity. China has been designated as the U.S.’s enemy in all but name, and Canadians have accepted that line with no real fuss. While the government has not officially declared China an enemy state, again, actions speak louder than words.
Arguably, this is a performative act long after the initial scare — a show to the U.S., and the incoming Trump administration, that Canada still has its back and to stay in the good graces of an increasingly mercurial nation.
It could also be interpreted as an effort by the Trudeau ministry to show it can flex muscles against China as the odds of the Liberal Party’s continuing reign increasingly become unlikely. Either way, there is an emptiness to the demand that does not pack the newsworthy punch that it would have previously had.
Thus, the descent into a new Cold War goes forth, led by a country that is increasingly encroaching decline. If Canada wishes to avert a similar fate, it has to start thinking for itself rather than take cues from the U.S.
The odds of that happening in our lifetimes is nil because that national wagon has been hitched for so long, and so completely, to the southern neighbour that decoupling will not be instantaneous. TikTok might be the first sign of tough times ahead.
