Thank you Mister_E. The problem I was having was that i forgot to put the line of code:

ADCON1=7 ' set all analog pins to digital

At the top of my program.

This was becuase my PortA has an Anologue to Digital converter onboard and I needed to tell the PIC to have it function as a standard I/O Port, as you have informed me.
I usually look at the data sheets but the examples are in ASSEMBLY and I get confused.
Once again thanks for the quick and precise answer.