Canada does not have a dictatorship ..... or does it?

'A very desperate fanatical act': Police probe severed foot sent to Tories
Steven Chase
Tuesday, May 29, 2012

A police officer removes a package containing a human foot from the Conservative Party headquarters in Ottawa on Tuesday, May 29, 2012. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Ottawa police are probing the gruesome delivery of a severed human foot to the headquarters of Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party, a bizarre act that a former RCMP criminal profiler says appears designed to intimidate the governing Tories.

A female Tory Party office staffer opened the sealed box late Tuesday morning to find the foul-smelling item encased in a bloody plastic bag. A hazmat team called to the scene on Albert Street briefly isolated between 10 to 12 people before determining there was no health hazard present.

 One Conservative Party source said the package, a simple white box with a red cartoon heart drawn on it, arrived by Canada Post. Another source said the box also contained a message but this could not be corroborated and a Tory Party source contradicted this. An Ottawa police spokesman refused to comment.

Former Mountie investigator Glenn Woods said it is the first time he’s heard of a Canadian political party being the target of such a horrific act. “This is the kind of stuff you might see in developing countries where you have dictatorships and coups.”

Mr. Woods, who retired from the RCMP as director of its behavioural sciences branch, said the extremely public stunt – “a very desperate fanatical act to get a point across” – doesn’t sound like something the mafia would stage.

“Organized crime generally will keep a low profile. They would never do something like this to bring [attention],” Mr. Woods said. “Their motivation is money. Short of making an example of someone who, for instance, is an informer, I have never seen then get involved in this kind of thing – particularly with a political party.”

The former Mountie said an accompanying note, if one exists, will have given police a far better sense of whom they are dealing with. “To me when you start sending human body parts there’s got to be some level of mental illness.”

The Ottawa police’s major crimes division is now probing the matter, trying to connect the foot to its owner and track down the person who sent the disturbing package.

They’re also talking to their counterparts in Montreal.

On Tuesday morning, a janitor working outside a building in the Côte-des-Neiges area of Montreal’s west-end found body parts, including a torso, in a suitcase in a pile of garbage.

Constable Daniel Fortier, spokesman for the Montreal police, said Montreal and Ottawa investigators “are talking to each other, they’re staying in touch.”

“But we don’t know yet if it’s related. Autopsies will be performed on the body parts, and hopefully we can find out who it may be. The information will be transmitted between the two forces.”

With a report from Les Perreaux in Montreal