Ron Parker
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Ronald J.D. Parker is a former political candidate in Ontario, Canada. He appears to have led the small Natural Law Party of Ontario from its inception in 1993 until its dissolution in or around 2000. He was active in the Natural Law Party of Canada.
Parker has a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Physics and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Queen's University. He was also given a Ph.D in Theoretical Physics from Maharishi International University in Iowa, where he worked with future presidential candidate John Hagelin. Parker studied the impact of unified field theories on the Big Bang theory.
He has worked as a pilot and professional musician, and claims to have devoted fifteen years of his life to research in the development of human consciousness. During the 1990s, he served as President of the Natural Law Institute of Canada.
The Natural Law Party received notoriety in the 1993 federal election by promising to solve Canada's social and economic problems by hiring a team of yogic flyers to elevate the nation's consciousness. The party was generally regarded as a novelty, despite protestations of seriousness from its leaders.
As leader of the Ontario party, Parker frequently spoke of "consciousness-based solutions" and "the science of consciousness" in reforming the individual. In the 1997 federal election, he promoted yogic flying as a means of developing a creative "national consciousness" and claimed that people using the NLP's approach to preventative health care experienced 90% fewer patient days in hospital. On a more mundane level, he also promised that his party would reduce the amount of red tape in small business.
In the 1999 provincial election, Parker promised to bring 7,000 yogic flyers to Ontario to improve the consciousness of the province. He promised that his party's policies would cut health spending by 50%, as well as increasing the value of education and ending school violence. Parker claimed that NLP policies had been tried in inner-city schools, with positive results.
The provincial NLP appears to have been delisted around 2000. By 2001, Parker had become director of Maharishi Veda Land Canada.
[edit] Electoral Record
- Canadian federal election, 1993, Ottawa South, 243 votes (winner: John Manley, Liberal Party of Canada)
- Ontario general election, 1995, Ottawa Centre, 365 votes (winner: Richard Patten, Ontario Liberal Party)
- Canadian federal election, 1997, Toronto Centre—Rosedale, 270 votes (winner: Bill Graham, Liberal Party of Canada)
- Ontario general election, 1999, Toronto Centre—Rosedale, 201 votes (winner: George Smitherman, Ontario Liberal Party)
- Canadian federal election, 2000, St. Paul's, 83 votes (winner: Carolyn Bennett, Liberal Party of Canada)
