Use of the incredibly contentious notwithstanding clause is in no way moving some punctuation marks: It is an extraordinary action, having never been used by the federal government. So no, in the context of what I said they can't.
From a political standpoint, absolutely it's extraordinary; from a legal standpoint it's relatively simple, just needing a majority vote. I'd be very surprised if they did invoke it, but prostitution is something a lot of Canadians (especially conservatives) feel pretty strongly about.
(And mainly, I was just trying to bring up an interesting legal quirk of our constitution, since it's fairly unusual and most of HN's audience might not be aware of it).
