Hi there,
My view on canonical tags is that they were precisely created to enable webmasters to continue using parameters in URLs and still consolidate SEO authority to the right page.
I think the combination of Canonical tag + robots noindex, follow should definitely help.
We implemented this on couple of client sites and we obtained a nice lift from the linkjuiced passed on by those pages.
The best answer would be to integrate any parameters within your user session rather than add them to URL or even use a hashtag after the proper url :
http://www.example.com/nice-seo-url/#parameter=24-12-2011&userid=santa