City of Ottawa looking into banning TikTok on city-issued devices

In the wake of the federal government's move to ban TikTok from employee devices, the city of Ottawa says its staff are looking into it.

Federal Treasury Board president Mona Fortier announced Monday that the decision to remove and block TikTok from government devices is being taken "as a precaution" and lines up with the approaches of international partners.

The popular social media app's parent company ByteDance is based in China and there are growing concerns over its connections with the Chinese government and its handling of user data. TikTok officials have insisted the app is not in any way controlled by the Chinese government.

In response to a question from CTV News Ottawa, a statement attributed to the city of Ottawa's chief information officer Sandro Carlucci said the city is reviewing the matter.

"The City is currently reviewing the federal government’s recent decision to ban TikTok from government issued mobile devices to consider whether a similar approach should be taken for the devices issued to our employees," the statement said. "We take the protection of information and IT security seriously and will provide an update to Council once the review has been completed."

It's unclear when city staff will complete their review.

The city of Ottawa does not have an active account on TikTok the way it does for Twitter and Facebook, but there is an account for recreation services that has 43 videos and just over 500 followers.

Other levels of government are also looking into banning the app. Ontario Premier Doug Ford's office told CTV News Toronto the provincial government is reviewing whether to remove and block the app from provincial devices.

Some federal politicians have already dropped TikTok from their social media profiles. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre suspended his account with nearly 240,000 followers Monday and informed his caucus to do the same, according to a spokesperson for his office. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh told reporters he would be stepping back from using the app, but his account with almost 880,000 followers is still active.

Three city councillors are active on TikTok. Tim Tierney, Ariel Troster and Catherine Kitts each have several videos on their accounts. There are a handful of other accounts that have names and profile images that match local councillors, but these accounts have no bios and no posts.

CTV News Ottawa has reached out to them to ask whether they are reconsidering their use of the app. 

Tierney told CTV News in an interview that he has the app on a personal phone and not a city-issued device. 

"We'll take the cues from the city. If the city does deem that they see this as some kind of security risk, I'm certain that other council colleagues will take it off their city devices, but at this point, we haven't heard anything different," he said.

Kitts said in an email she has deleted TikTok from her work phone proactively. 

"I’m not overly active on it, so any potential future TikToking will happen from my personal device, which isn’t connected to the City networks," she wrote.

Coun. Marty Carr replied to say she plans to delete an account she had set up to follow her kids.

"I set that up years ago to follow my teenagers. I have NO idea how to use it nor have I ever," she said in an email.

An account with Coun. Allan Hubley's name on it exists, but it has no activity and Hubley said he does not use the app. 

--With files from CTV News Ottawa's Leah Larocque and CTV News Toronto's Katherine DeClerq