TikTok files challenge against Canadian government order to dissolve its business

TikTok has challenged a Canadian government order to shut down the Chinese video-sharing app’s business operations in the country that was imposed over national security concerns.

The company said Tuesday that it filed an application for a judicial review with the Federal Court in Vancouver on December 5, which seeks to set aside the order for TikTok to wind-up and cease its business in Canada.

The Canadian federal government last month announced it was ordering the dissolution of TikTok Technology Canada Inc after a national security review of its Chinese parent company ByteDance Limited.

The Canadian government is not blocking access to the TikTok app, which will continue to be available to Canadians. TikTok said it has 14 million users in Canada, which is about a third of the population. It has offices in Toronto and Vancouver.

The wildly popular platform is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020, but is under increasing pressure in the West. It is facing a possible ban in the United States and intensifying scrutiny in Europe over issues including election influence campaigns allegedly coordinated by Moscow.

TikTok argues in its court application, which was posted online, that Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s decision was “unreasonable” and “driven by improper purposes” It said the order was “grossly disproportionate” and that the national security review was “procedurally unfair”.

The review was carried out through the Investment Canada Act, which allows the government to investigate foreign investment with potential to harm national security.

Champagne said in a statement at the time that the government was taking action to address “specific national security risks”, but did not elaborate. His office said in response to the filling that the government’s decision was informed by a “thorough national security review and advice from Canada’s security and intelligence community”.

TikTok said Champagne “failed to engage with TikTok Canada on the purported substance of the concerns” that led to the order.

It argued that the government ordered “measures that bear no rational connection to the national security risks it identifies” and that the reasons for the order “are unintelligible, fail to reveal a rational chain of analysis and are rife with logical fallacies”.

The platform said there were “less onerous” options than shutting down its Canadian business, which it said would eliminate hundreds of jobs, threaten business contracts and “cause the destruction of significant economic opportunities”.

AP