My experience learning French is that Belgian French or Swiss French is spoken a bit slower than french from France, and of course, that's a generalization, but in school we learned that in terms of speed, France had the fastest French, then Belgium, then the Swiss; and yea, when I had a teacher from Lyon, France, I had a hard time following her as she spoke very fast compared let's say to a Belgian. French from Canada I can only describe it as, French spoken with an american southern twang. :) Imagine somebody from the south of the USA speaking french...that's how Canadian French sounds like to me and many times, I have a hard time understanding it. If you're learning French, maybe start out with European French.