Sharon Hayes

Sharon Ruth Hayes (born January 15, 1948) is a former Canadian politician.

Born in Toronto, Ontario, she represented the riding of Port Moody—Coquitlam from 1993 to 1997 for the Reform Party of Canada.

Hayes is a graduate of the Honours Math and Computer Science program at the University of Waterloo; while enrolled there, she worked as a co-op student with the and IBM. After graduation, she worked as a program analyst at the University of Guelph and then as a Sessional Instructor in computer science at Simon Fraser University. She married Douglas Hayes June 13, 1970.

Her election victory in 1993 came over the incumbent, Ian Waddell of the New Democratic Party, and challenger Celso Boscariol, B.C. president of the Liberal Party of Canada. As one of 52 Reform MPs, she served as Chair of the party's Family Caucus and critic on Human Rights and Status of Women. She was assistant critic for Health (1995-'96) and Human Resources (1997), and a member of the Standing Committees on Health (1994-'97), Citizenship and Immigration (1994-'96) and Human Rights (1996-'97), and of the sub-Committee on HIV/AIDS (1994-'96). While in office, Hayes joined many of her Reform colleagues in donating 10% of their salary to charity and opting out of the MP pension plan.

Hayes was best known as a socially conservative advocate for family issues. She crafted the RPC's response to parliamentary initiatives on family and the definition of family, age of consent, Child Care Tax Credit, corporal punishment and the Unified Family Court. She was an advocate for the rights of the disabled, and prompted a change to the compassionate airfare policy for Air Canada. Hayes also sponsored a rally in 1994 in Coquitlam of an estimated 2,000 persons to press for changes to the Young Offenders Act.

...
Wikipedia