"Our flag has likely already been put away in some drawer, where it will be ignored and forgotten. Shame on the Prime Minister for this carelessness with an important Canadian symbol."

Precisely.
 P M Pierre Trudeau might have given the Queen another kind of important Canadian symbol - the middle finger.
  But that's the world of difference between the insouciant liberating Canada of the progressive 1960's and today's fake progressivism lost in such kowtowing to the remnants of the British Empire.