I think the lesson from this is language politics suck. Canada was bad enough, with Quebec separatism and Federal politics veering towards regional and Francophone parties in the 90s and early 00s, but Belgium seems to have taken it to another level.
Sadly it seems like there is no common political fabric to bind the two main regions together, and as long as you have separate parties for each region at federal level then you're going to struggle to have a coherent national government. Fortunately that didn't come to pass in Canada - yet, even in Quebec the main federal parties have representation and compete with the local parties.

Shame if Belgium splits up, it seems utterly ridiculous that they are in this situation, but it seems like it's being run as 2 separate countries at the moment anyway. Switzerland, Spain and other countries seem to cope with the language/regional divide reasonably well, I just don't understand why Belgians can't manage it. Maybe it's down to bad politicians :-(