Considering that it seems to be every prominent Canadian’s preferred second nationality, from the Governor-General and the new Leader of the Opposition down, France is a faraway country of which we know little. One had assumed the French themselves were a wee bit more on top of things. Switch on the TV from time to time and you often stumble across footage of the mob overturning cars in Paris over some modest regulatory change M Chirac’s hapless ministers have proposed. It would seem to indicate a more active engagement with politics than most western citizenries are willing to muster. Yet...