Following Ottawa's decision last week to shut down TikTok's Canadian business subsidiary over national security concerns, many have questioned why the government is still allowing Canadians to download and use the app—at least for now.

Speaking recently with Ian Hanomansing on CBC's The National, Gowling WLG partner and cyber security lawyer Brent Arnold dissected Ottawa's relatively subdued response to threat the social media app potentially poses. Such threats include granting a foreign entity access to Canadians' private information and enabling it to influence Canadian elections.

"Do you pull the app from the store? Do you ban the app? That's not what they're doing. What they're doing is just shutting down the Canadian subsidiary," said Brent. "There's a disconnect between what's been done and what would actually address the concerns that have been raised."

The reason, Brent says, may boil down to a lack of enforcement tools to deal with these unique situations.

"The tool they are using here is under the Investment Canada Act and shutting down a Canadian business is one of the very few powers that they have under that act to deal with a company that they have concerns about."

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