The elected officials of the National Assembly and the House of Commons make a cross on TikTok. They will remove the Chinese-owned app from their feature phones. Their political employees, too.
A few hours after the President of the Treasury Board of Canada, Mona Fortier, raised the “unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security” posed by the social network, Quebec parliamentarians received an email on Tuesday from the Assembly national government encouraging them “strongly” to evacuate it from their aircraft.
The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), the Liberal Party, Québec solidaire and the Parti Québécois have indicated their intention to comply with this suggestion.
On Monday, public service employees in both Ottawa and Quebec were told they would have to get rid of the app as soon as possible.
Tuesday morning, the ministers of the CAQ were warned that “the decision taken yesterday concerns the devices used and provided by the Quebec public administration”. “So: any state cell phone must delete TikTok,” said Prime Minister François Legault’s press secretary, Ewan Sauves, in an exchange of text messages. The political employees of these elected officials are also affected by the directive, he said.
Will ministers who have an account have to delete it? “There is no decision taken at this time,” said the Prime Minister’s Office. About 112,000 people follow Mr. Legault’s account on TikTok. Minister Sonia LeBel, a regular on the platform, where she regularly posts videos of herself behind the handlebars of her snowmobile, has more than 3,000 followers.
The House of Commons too
In Ottawa, MPs will no longer be able to install TikTok on their phones starting Friday, they learned. “All users who hold devices managed by the Chamber [ont été avertis] that the TikTok mobile application will no longer be able to be installed, ”wrote the director of communications for the Office of the Speaker in the House of Commons, Amélie Crosson.
Avoid deleting the application and you will be in violation of the rules of the House, added the presidency in its message to parliamentarians.
At the Conservative Party of Canada, leader Pierre Poilievre, who is very active on the platform, closed his account in the last few hours and all caucus members will “suspend” theirs and remove the app from their phones, said political training.
“Conservatives take all privacy and security threats from foreign authoritarian regimes seriously and will always defend the privacy rights of Canadians,” spokesperson Sebastian Skamski wrote in an email.
The Bloc Québécois has announced that its TikTok account has been deleted. Chef Yves-François Blanchet did not have an account.
“For security reasons and to comply with the House of Commons directive, all Bloc Québécois MPs and staff will remove the TikTok app from their House-managed devices,” wrote the party on Twitter.
The account of the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Jagmeet Singh, which totals 879,000 subscribers, is still online. The NDP has indicated that its MPs will comply with the directive from the House of Commons. Its last post was five days ago.
Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, Justin Trudeau, did not have a TikTok account.
What about state corporations?
The ban on using the social network does not only apply to elected officials. On Tuesday, Hydro-Québec confirmed to Duty that it “bans TikTok on its mobile devices and blocks access from the company’s network”.
The Société des alcools du Québec had made no decision to that effect on Tuesday. “However, we are closely monitoring developments and do not rule out banning the use of the app on our devices as a preventative measure,” the state-owned company’s spokeswoman wrote. Genevieve Cormier.
With The Canadian Press