July 7,2025
RED FM News Desk
TikTok has announced that it will withdraw as a sponsor from several Canadian arts organizations — including the Juno Awards and the Toronto International Film Festival — as it prepares to comply with a federal directive to cease operations in Canada.
Since launching offices in Toronto and Vancouver, TikTok says it has invested millions of dollars over the past five years in initiatives and partnerships aimed at supporting local artists and content creators.
However, Steve de Eyre, TikTok Canada’s Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs, said that Ottawa is now enforcing its November 2024 order to shut down TikTok’s operations due to national security concerns. As a result, the company is left with no choice but to indefinitely suspend its programs in Canada.
One affected organization is MusiCounts, an educational charity that TikTok says it has supported with $500,000 to help fund music programs in high schools. TikTok has been a partner of the Junos since 2020 and the title sponsor of the Juno Fan Choice Award.
Other impacted initiatives include the National Screen Institute’s TikTok Accelerator for Indigenous Creators, which has served nearly 400 participants since 2021.
In the U.S., similar national security concerns have prompted action. A bipartisan law passed in 2024 requires ByteDance — TikTok’s Chinese parent company — to sell its U.S. assets by mid-January or face a ban.
Although the app briefly went offline at the start of the year, it resumed a few days later after Donald Trump assumed the presidency.
A proposed deal to spin off TikTok’s U.S. operations into a new company, majority-owned by American investors, was put on hold when Trump imposed steep tariffs on Chinese imports.
Last month, Trump extended the deadline for ByteDance to divest, setting a new cutoff date of September 17. On Friday, he told reporters he expects to begin negotiations with China this week regarding a possible agreement.
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