What about Wallonia?

Seven years of intense negotiations affecting trillions of dollars in trade appeared to flounder Friday when a dejected International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland announced she was giving up and going home.

Freeland has been in Wallonia, the small francophone region of Belgium, striving to convince local officials to approve passage of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), a massive free trade deal between Canada and the 28 members of the European Union. The EU requires all its member states to consent to the treaty, and while the Belgian national government supports CETA, it is bound by local laws to secure the support of its three regional parliaments. With a Friday deadline looming, and despite intense pressure, Wallonia refused to play ball. So Freeland walked out, and released a statement making clear her frustration.

“Over the past several months,” it read in part, “we have worked very hard with the European Commission and member states. … Canada has worked, and I personally have worked very hard, but it is now evident to me, evident to Canada, that the European Union is incapable of reaching an agreement — even with a country with European values such as Canada, even with a country as nice and as patient as Canada. … We are returning home. At least I will see my three children tomorrow at our home.”

While Freeland deserves points for sincerity, the issue isn’t whether Canada is “nice” enough, or whether her team has worked hard. The point is that Canada, a trading nation, is seeking to expand its exports and grow its economy, against worrying signs of anti-trade sentiment across the globe. Every deal is going to be hard work — Canada has been working on CETA since 2009, when prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives hitched their wagon to liberalized international trade. The work has only got harder since then, as obstructionist forces have grown.

This can be no surprise to Freeland. Before entering politics, she was a journalist focusing on foreign affairs and author of Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. The book, as the title suggests, concerns the increasing concentration of wealth in ever-fewer hands and the economic consequences on those left behind. It is no small irony that Wallonia, with just 3.5 million people, is an example of those who fear being left behind. With a population roughly the size of Greater Montreal, aboveaverage unemployment and heavily protected farmers, locals are increasingly concerned that their livelihoods could be threatened if cheaper Canadian goods (particularly agricultural) were to squeeze its exports out of European markets.

Wallonia, then, is a microcosm of the forces that have been increasingly vocal in their opposition to trade. In defending free trade, “progressive” forces, such as Canadian Liberals and U.S. Democrats, have emphasized the need to protect those who are vulnerable to the shifts in fortune it entails. That they have failed to act on their words is evident in the increasing difficulty of obtaining approval for new pacts. The same people who emphasize the importance of “social licence” have failed to convince Walloons to grant it. Going home mad won’t alter that unfortunate reality.

There is another key takeaway from Canada’s inability to complete the deal, and one with implications broader than just one trade deal, even one as significant as CETA. Freeland is almost certainly right to note that the EU is currently too dysfunctional to tackle any substantive issues in an effective manner. We’ve seen that already in its response to Russian aggression, to the migration crisis and now to international trade with Canada, a country with a comparable standard of living, well-developed legal system, rule of law and respect for human rights.

Despite the Liberal government’s fondness for “Canada’s back” rhetoric and multilateral forums, this is an example of the limits on sunny optimism as a means of making our way in the world. Niceness won’t put food on Wallonian plates, nor will patience convince the region’s subsidized dairy farmers that Canada’s subsidized dairy farmers deserve better protection than they do. It may seem absurd that Germany, France and Italy will be blocked from free trade with Canada because one Belgian region objects, but such is the convoluted system the Europeans have built (and that British voters, it should be noted, recently chose to opt out of ).

Perhaps fellow Europeans will find a way to smooth things over in Wallonia. Meanwhile the Liberals have learned again that the world isn’t there to please Canada, no matter how much we might want to help.