Whether the toxic practice is called “community engagement,” conducting “street checks,” or police “carding,” this much is clear — it needs to stop.

In Toronto, at least, there’s growing consensus on that point. Mayor John Tory (open John Tory's policard)supports a permanent end to police carding. Members of the city’s black community have long expressed their concerns. And a remarkable coalition of former mayors, civic advocates, politicians, rights activists and legal authorities has publicly called for this corrosive practice to be halted.

The province, however, doesn’t appear quite ready to go that far. Ontario’s Liberal government has announced it will develop new standards and regulations designed to fix carding by stopping “unjustified” police street checks. But it’s not yet clear just how that would be done.

The government plans to consult over the summer with police, community groups, civil libertarians, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and the public at large before introducing specific reforms this fall.

There’s a case for developing province-wide rules since many police forces, not just Toronto’s, engage in controversial street checks. But it’s important to get this right.

Ideally, there would be two outcomes stemming from the government’s consultation: a formal determination to ban police carding wherever it exists in Ontario, and a set of clear instructions to officers explaining how they should interact with the public – especially people who have committed no apparent crime.

Carding has been suspended in Toronto, pending reform. But it involved having police stop people, more or less at random, in order to ask a series of invasive and personal questions. Their responses would be entered into a massive police database. The practice has been defended as a useful law enforcement tool. But a series of Star investigations found that people with black or brown skin were being carded at disproportionately high rates in a pattern consistent with racial profiling.

That’s what makes this practice so objectionable — and why it should be banned. Needed now are new rules governing how officers gather intelligence while on patrol, including a clear indication of when people should be questioned. To the greatest extent possible, motivations based on bias should be blocked from that process.

One can only hope the coming consultations will result in some concrete strategies to this end. If so, there might yet be a welcome resolution to the agonizing debate over police carding.