Smith was born in Deloraine, Manitoba, Canada. She 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. She worked as a teacher for twenty-three years before entering political life, and in 1986 received the Hedley Award for Excellence in Research. During the 1990s, she served as a liaison for private and home-schooling groups. Smith is also an entrepreneur. She 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. She was also the owner of Gem Records for a time. In 1996, she was nominated for Manitoba's Woman Entrepreneur of the Year award.
In 2002, as justice critic for the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives, she spoke against a bill which provided adoption rights to same-sex couples in that province. Smith argued that her party did not oppose same-sex adoption rights as such, but that the proposed legislation was flawed. In a June 2005 parliamentary debate on same-sex marriage, she stated that, "If decides to get married, she will know that the meaning of marriage is the union of a man and a woman. If she chooses otherwise, it will be her choice." The result of the bill, she said, would be to "cause marriage to just go away with the stroke of a pen." She also claimed the bill was discriminatory against married couples. The Toronto Star reported that Smith broke down in tears during the debate. In the 2004 federal election, Smith campaigned as a Conservative candidate in the north Winnipeg riding of Kildonan—St. Paul. She had previously been nominated as a candidate of the Canadian Alliance, where she was the Manitoba organizer for Stockwell Day's bid for leadership, before that party merged with the Progressive Conservatives in 2003–04. Smith narrowly defeated Liberal candidate Terry Duguid, 13,582 votes to 13,304. Smith was named Manitoba caucus chair, giving her a seat on the Conservative Party's Planning and Priorities Committee. She was also a member of the Status of Women Group, Ukrainian-Canadian Parliamentary Group, Canada-Israel Parliamentary Group and Canada-USA Relations Parliamentary Group. In 2004, 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 Ukraine presidential election. Smith defeated Duguid again by a significantly larger plurality in the 2006 federal election, as the Conservatives won a national minority government. Smith along with the Conservative government were re-elected in the October 2008 federal election to another minority government. In 2006, 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, 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. Smith began developing the plan in 2008 and continued to work on it for several years. She sought to have the plan developed and established in order "to rescue and restore the victims and prosecute the offenders" of human trafficking. The plan was established by the Government of Canada on June 6, 2012 as the National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking. Also in 2007, Smith introduced a private member's bill called the Clean Internet Act. The bill was passed unanimously, and set in place a strategy to combat human trafficking globally by opposing such trafficking across international borders, specifically in the case of women and children being trafficked for sexual purposes. In her words, the bill would "... prevent the use of the Internet to distribute child pornography, material that advocates, promotes or incites racial hatred, and material that portrays or promotes violence against women." Part of the bill proposes a "know your subscriber" requirement for ISPs and would mandate them to deny Internet access to offenders. It also proposes to give special searching powers to the Ministry of Industry. The above features have led it to be criticized as something that "... would not look out-of-place in countries that aggressively censor the Internet." In her column, "Sex traders, keep your hands off our children!", Smith asserted that "the average age of entry into prostitution in Canada is between 12 and 14 years of age." In October 2010, Smith conducted the inaugural Honouring Heroes Award Ceremony at Eastview Community Church, an annual event recognizing people who have fought to support victims of sexual trafficking. In 2012, Smith presented human-trafficking-related Bill C-10 to the Senate of Canada. The bill was eventually passed as the Safe Streets and Communities Act, a policy of the Canadian government. While Smith was in Ottawa to present Bill C-10, she was also scheduled to speak on the talkback panel in conjunction with the human-trafficking-related play She Has a Name. 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 U.K. by British Prime Minister David Cameron. Details of what content specifically would be deemed "pornographic" and blocked were not provided. She did not run for re-election in 2015.
Out of politics
In 2012, while in political office, Joy founded The Joy Smith Foundation Inc, a registered charity that works to suppress human trafficking in Canada. After retiring from politics, Joy began working full-time for her organization, which has been criticized for spending significantly more on operational and overhead costs and less on actual charity work. In 2018 the Joy Smith Foundation spent only 13.57% on actual charity work and 49.96% on Management and administration costs.
