23 Facts About Joy Smith

Joy Ann Smith was born on February 20,1947 and is a Canadian politician.

Joy Smith served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba between 1999 and 2003, and was in the House of Commons of Canada from 2004 to 2015.

Joy Smith holds a Master's Degree in Education from the University of Manitoba, and a music diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Ontario.

Joy Smith worked as a teacher for twenty-three years before entering political life, and in 1986 received the Hedley Award for Excellence in Research.

Joy Smith published a book entitled Lies My Kid's Teacher Told Me in 1996, and a follow-up entitled, Tools of the Trade a few years later.

Joy Smith was nominated after the incumbent member of the assembly, cabinet minister Rosemary Vodrey, chose not to run again.

In one of the closest constituency races of the campaign, Joy Smith narrowly defeated New Democrat Lawrie Cherniack by thirty votes.

The New Democratic Party replaced the Conservatives' majority government with one of their own at the election, and Joy Smith served as the Progressive Conservative critic for education and justice.

Joy Smith argued that her party did not oppose same-sex adoption rights as such, but that the proposed legislation was flawed.

Fort Garry was a top NDP target in the 2003 election, and Joy Smith lost the constituency to New Democrat Kerri Irvin-Ross by eighty-seven votes.

The Toronto Star reported that Joy Smith broke down in tears during the debate.

Joy Smith was a member of the Status of Women Group, Ukrainian-Canadian Parliamentary Group, Canada-Israel Parliamentary Group and Canada-USA Relations Parliamentary Group.

In 2004, Joy Smith was selected to be part of the Canadian delegation assigned to travel to Ukraine and observe a court-ordered repeat of the second round of voting the presidential election.

Joy Smith narrowly defeated Liberal candidate Terry Duguid, 13,582 votes to 13,304.

Joy Smith was named Manitoba caucus chair, giving her a seat on the Conservative Party's Planning and Priorities Committee.

Joy Smith defeated Duguid again by a significantly larger plurality in the 2006 federal election, as the Conservatives won a national minority government, replacing the Liberals as such.

In 2006, Joy Smith introduced a private member's bill, asking parliamentarians to condemn human trafficking and come up with a comprehensive plan to combat the problem.

In February 2007, Joy Smith put forward motion C-153 to put a national action plan in place to combat human trafficking, and the House of Commons passed the motion unanimously.

Joy Smith began developing the plan in 2008 and continued to work on it for several years.

Joy Smith sought to have the plan developed and established in order "to rescue and restore the victims and prosecute the offenders" of human trafficking.

Also in 2007, Joy Smith introduced a private member's bill called the Clean Internet Act.

In 2012, Joy Smith presented human-trafficking-related Bill C-10 to the Senate of Canada.

Joy Smith proposed and claimed to be working on, in July 2013, a bill that disallows access to pornography online for all Canadians by default unless they choose to opt in, similar to earlier legislation put forward in the UK by British Prime Minister David Cameron.