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OTTAWA — Call it the world’s oldest legislative headache.

A Conservative government that hoped to restore its fortunes in 2014 by talking about pipelines, international trade and victims of crime now will have to deal with the world’s oldest profession.

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The Supreme Court of Canada effectively gutted Canada’s prostitution laws by finding this week that legislation against street soliciting, living on the avails and keeping a brothel was unconstitutional.

The court gave Parliament one year to come up with a new legislative scheme before the old laws are unenforceable.

While sex workers cheered at the Supreme Court in the hopes the unanimous court judgment ultimately leads to the decriminalization of prostitution, there seems little prospect of that under a government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

“We view prostitution as bad for society and we view its effects as particularly harmful for our communities and women, and particularly for vulnerable women, and we will continue to oppose prostitution in Canada,” Harper said in March 2012 after the Ontario Court of Appeal set in motion Friday’s decision by striking down parts of the federal law.