Canada's Supreme Court takes on racial profiling - again

The Supreme Court of Canada is about to re-visit a case that most people thought had been long resolved and closed. 

The case revolves around the right of police officers to randomly stop drivers for document checks, even if there is no actual suspicion of anything illegal. Back in 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that such stops were legal because, although they appear to contravene the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Court ruled that it was a reasonable limit on individual freedoms in the interests of preserving safety on our roads. 

But the Supreme Court decision was far from unanimous, and it has been treated with legal skepticism ever since, mainly because it tends to lead to racial profiling. Yes, such random stops do sometimes yield results, e.g. someone driving after being suspended, etc. But they are clearly open to abuse, particularly racial abuse. 

(Interestingly, random police stops at fixed checkpoints, e.g. to deter drunk driving, are not being challenged. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld their legality. But what really is the difference? Are they not just as open to racial profiling?)

Now, I'm not really sure why police would distroportionately choose to stop Black people. Is it because of a perception that Blacks are more likely to break the law than Whites, either from personal experience or from underlying or systemic racism, knowingly or otherwise? But clearly it is a fact: research shows that Black people are around five times as likely as Whites to be targeted during such "random" stops.

Legal challenges in some  provinces, e.g. Quebec, have occasionally succeeded in striking down the 1990 decision. But governments, both in Quebec and federally, who insist that random stops are essential for road safety - even though there does not seem to be any compelling empirical evidence to prove that - want the matter decided once and for all by the highest court in the land, hence this week's Supreme Court case.

It will be interesting to see the Court's findings. My initial feeling was that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with random stops as a road safety strategy. And, God knows, Canads's roads are pretty scary these days, although the numbers of accidents and deaths being reported in Canada have come down significantly in recent decades, they seem to be on the rise again). And there is no obvious reason to me why Black people should be targeted so disproportionately, but clearly they are. 

So, given that, what is the remedy? Yes, we could say "no more random stops", a rather draconian solution, throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater. But is there really no middle way? I'm not saying that mandatory anti-racism training is the answer - that seems like a bit of a pie-in-the-sky / Kumbaya / Hail Mary kind of solution. But are there no other ideas? Surely, people have spend decades researching this stuff: have they come up with nothing?