Between June 19 and July 8, former Green Party of Canada leadership candidate Dimitri Lascaris conducted a twelve-city speaking tour across the country titled “Making Peace With Russia, One Handshake at a Time.” The tour was organized by the Canada-wide Peace and Justice Network and followed Lascaris’s visit to Russia in April.

Multiple parties have made concerted efforts to disrupt or cancel the scheduled events through a range of tactics. These included inundating venues with phone calls and mass emails, organizing in-person protests, and engaging in deceptive practices such as mass booking of Eventbrite tickets with no intention of attending. Despite the requirement of advanced tickets and the last-minute disclosure of event locations, five venues succumbed to the pressure and canceled their bookings.

In the case of the first Toronto event, it was relocated to a nearby pub due to the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) revoking the room booking at the eleventh hour. OPSEU cited the receipt of threatening messages as the reason for its decision.