The leading news story following the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s arrival in Victoria, Canada, on Saturday was the unreturned high five Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau offered up to three-year-old Prince George. The press on both sides of the ocean fawned over this five-second encounter – our superstar prime minister, down on one knee, trying first for a top-down high five, then a classic straight-on one, then a handshake, as the dapper little prince looked on, unmoved.

No five: Prince George refuses greeting from Canada's Justin Trudeau Read more

The royal couple’s west coast PR junket of British Columbia and the Yukon is itself a kind of high-five offer to Canada, and one that many of us are not inclined to return. Indeed, one of British Columbia’s First Nations chiefs has declined to participate in a reconciliation ceremony with the royal couple, describing the event as a “public charade” that papers over the Canadian government’s failure to keep its promises to indigenous peoples. This visit offers Canadians the important opportunity to discuss our status as a constitutional monarchy in the new era of Trudeau, and to ask ourselves searching questions about our identity as a nation.

For those who may not know (only 24% of Canadians do), Queen Elizabeth II remains Canada’s head of state. She is on our currency and all new Canadians must swear allegiance to her during our citizenship ceremony. Under our former prime minister Stephen Harper, Canada’s royal ties were notably strengthened, including the controversial return of the “royal” moniker to the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force in 2011 – which had been removed in 1968. When Harper installed David Johnston as Canada’s governor general — the Queen’s representative in Canada – a panoramic painting by Anishinaabe-Canadian painter Norval Morrisseau was removed from the centre of the ballroom at Rideau Hall, the governor general’s residence, and replaced by a monumental portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.

It was under this portrait that I was presented with a Governor General’s Award for Drama in 2014. At the black tie ceremony I watched First Nations writer Thomas King and seven Quebecois writers accept their honours as great Elizabeth Regina towered over them. As I sat beside fellow honouree Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, leader of the 2012 Quebec student protests, I nodded up to the portrait on the wall. He gritted his teeth and shook his head. “C’est fou,” he muttered. “It’s insane.”

Though Queen Elizabeth’s position as Canada’s head of state is chiefly symbolic, symbols matter, they shape how we think of ourselves and the world, and this one perpetuates our national position as vassals of the British crown, the tyranny of heredity monarchies and the traumas of colonisation. It symbolises a system of conquest, class and dominance that we, as a nation, must once and for all disavow ourselves of. And though we have tried, this arrangement cannot – and never could – be reconciled with Quebec and the First Nations. It is antithetical to a 21st century nation predicated on plurality.

Under prime minister Trudeau, Canada has re-emerged as a leading liberal democracy on the world stage. But while his father, prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, charted a bold course for an independent Canada through the repatriation of the constitution in 1982 (which transferred the country’s highest law, the British North America Act, from the authority of the British parliament to Canada’s federal and provincial legislatures), Justin seems content with buttressing the royal brand through chummy photo-shoots with William, Kate and the recalcitrant George.

Canada First Nations chief won't join UK royals for 'empty gesture' ceremony Read more

A more vital vision of Canada’s future, and one befitting his father’s legacy, would see Trudeau revisit a motion last tabled at a Liberal party convention in 2012 – the severance of ties with the crown, a shift from a constitutional monarch to a parliamentary republic and, for the first time in our nation’s history, the installation of a Canadian head of state. It could be a prickly political pear, requiring the consent of the federal parliament and all 10 provincial legislatures. And there would be a number of constitutional and legal challenges, like the fact that First Nations’ treaties are with the Crown. But none are insurmountable and none are worth denying Canada a truly independent vision of its own future.

I would high five Trudeau for this.