Ron Parker

I was born on Prince Edward Island and spent many summers of my youth on my grandparents’ small farm there. I attended school and have worked in New Brunswick, Cape Breton, and Nova Scotia. I have spent the entirety of my adult life primarily in the Halifax area and South Shore of Nova Scotia. I have three adult children and two grandchildren.

I am an IT consultant with 39 years of experience architecting large software systems for government clients—first for the Nova Scotia Department of Social Services and Department of Health. Later, I worked for 15 years with a federal agency, accelerating the use of interoperable software systems in healthcare at a national level. From those experiences, I understand the importance of communicating a clear vision, collaborating with others on its value, and giving capable people the leadership, resources, and confidence to realize that vision.

The achievement I am most proud of is leading a team of colleagues in designing and gaining consensus for the pan-Canadian Electronic Health Record Solutions Blueprint. The Blueprint was designed to allow every person’s health data to be securely accessible by them and appropriately available to their healthcare providers when and where it is needed for their health and care.

The Blueprint approach has been used across Canada by provincial and territorial health ministries. Since then, I have worked with UN agencies as part of a team that extended the concepts of that earlier work into the Digital Health Platform Handbook. It is now a WHO-required reference architecture being applied in several countries.

The inspiration for my participation in the Green Party came from my father, who, as a volunteer for the Green Party of PEI, helped the PEI Greens’ leader and the party become the official opposition. Seeing Green Party principles in action, I became a member of the Green Party of Nova Scotia in 2017, where I ran as a GPNS candidate in two provincial by-elections. I have been a member of the Green Party of Canada since March 2019.

My vision for Halifax West is a community where individuals, families, organizations, and employers feel a sense of stability and sustainability in their daily lives and have confidence in their future. A multicultural society where we uphold the values and virtues that make Canada a great nation. A place where we recognize that the vitality of our economy and our ecosystem are inextricably linked—two sides of the same “sustainability coin.”

My role as the Parliamentary representative for Halifax West will be to engage with our many communities to understand residents’ hopes and goals, to learn what each of us believes “needs to be true” to achieve that vision. With those insights, I will work to find the resources, create incentives, and reduce or eliminate barriers at the federal level to help us achieve the future we collectively desire and deserve.