Oh, Canada!

But if you accept precaution when it comes to one area, shouldn't you apply that same caution to all areas equally? One would think.

But earlier this year, the Canadian-beef-banning French government backed down from a proposed smoking ban. Parisians can still smoke until they're blue in the face on Rue Saint Germain.

If the precautionary principle is designed to demonstrate the limits of science, it must surely also be an effective tool to illustrate our priorities and our national character. We can't call ourselves particularly cautious, but we sure can call ourselves puritanical.

I imagine The Book will include a chapter on genetically modified foods, either chronicling Europe's unsubstantiated paranoia or America's unforgivable naivety. But it probably won't have much to say about Ontario's propensity to poke at Quebec by way of Paris.

The vagaries of the precautionary principle