TikTok yanks funding from Canadian cultural institutions ahead of potential shutdown

A solution to TikTok‘s problems in the U.S. seems to be on the horizon, with a buyer group lined up and a new regional app slated for debut in September.

Its problems in Canada, on the other hand, may be far from over.

Following a 2024 investigation by the federal Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Industry in Ottawa, TikTok has been ordered to shut down Canadian operations due to national security concerns.

As part of the wind-down, it just yanked sponsorship funding from a number of Canadian cultural institutions and events, including the Toronto Film Festival, the Juno Awards, and education charity MusiCounts. It’s also ended the National Screen Institute‘s TikTok Accelerator for Indigenous Creators.

TikTok had been sponsoring the Juno Awards since 2022, TIFF since 2022, and had provided $500,000 in funding to MusiCounts. The Accelerator for Indigenous Creators, meanwhile, worked with nearly 400 content-makers from Canada’s First Nations.

“The termination of TikTok Canada’s funding for cultural organizations like the Junos, TIFF and Adsiq is entirely due to the federal government’s order to shutdown TikTok Canada’s local operation,” Steve de Eyre, TikTok Canada’s Director of Public Policy & Government Affairs, said in a statement. “This harmful and misguided order not only eliminates funding for investments in Canadian culture and content creators–including programs like the TikTok Accelerator for Indigenous Creators–it also requires us to terminate hundreds of local jobs.”

To CBC, he added, “It breaks my heart that we’re being forced to cancel [these programs],” and said TikTok cannot commit to renewing partnerships while its fate is uncertain.

Much like it did in the U.S., TikTok is challenging the Canadian federal government’s cease-operations order in court, with de Eyre saying it’s offered to address security concerns with things like increased transparency about data handling. If its bid is unsuccessful, it’ll have to shut down offices in Toronto and Vancouver. (The TikTok app would, however, remain accessible to Canadian users; it’s just that TikTok wouldn’t be able to have local employees/offices/data centers.)

“We’re hopeful we can still avoid [a shutdown], but as it stands, there are starting to be real consequences,” de Eyre said. “We should be present, we should be investing in cultural organizations, we should have people who are accountable to Parliament, to regulators, to law enforcement. If there are concerns about security, let’s address them.”

The Canadian government is (perhaps unsurprisingly) much more close-mouthed about what it thinks of TikTok than the Trump administration is. However, it did say last week that it completed “a multi-step national security process” that found TikTok lacking–hence the stop order.

As things stand, TikTok is slated for Canadian shutdown. But if and when ByteDance finishes selling TikTok’s U.S. operations to Oracle et al., that might provide a path forward with our northern neighbor. Canada might accept a TikTok that isn’t owned by a Chinese conglomerate.

Then again, considering how tense things are between the U.S. and Canada right now, that deal might not make a difference.