VICTORIA 鈥� After 34 NDP MLAs were sworn in to continue that will reach at least 16 years, leader Adrian Dix took a few questions about his future.

The party鈥檚 provincial council will meet June 21 to set the terms of reference for a review of the party鈥檚 dismal election performance, Dix told reporters. He repeated that his performance won鈥檛 be spared, and ticked off some conventional wisdom about the NDP campaign.

Dix mentioned the alleged lack of 鈥渘egative鈥� ads, the local campaigns (read candidates), the decreasing reliability of polls and, when pressed, his surprise decision to come out against the proposed twinning of the TransMountain oil pipeline.

Like last week鈥檚 hysteria over , these are great sound bites for the short attention spans of the modern media. But they don鈥檛 explain much.

This all-powerful NDP provincial council is a case in point. A glimpse into its inner workings was provided by a summary of an NDP policy development workshop called 鈥淚magine Our Future鈥� that was in the final days of the campaign.

The workshop took place in November 2010, coincidentally at the same provincial council meeting where the revolt against former leader Carole James tumbled into the open. While 13 caucus members were knifing their leader for reasons they still can鈥檛 or won鈥檛 articulate in public 鈥� a glaring problem in itself 鈥� the backroom policy brainstorm revealed a deeper malaise.

Among the 鈥渄ream tree鈥� notions put forward in the workshop was 鈥渇ree鈥� post-secondary tuition and public transit, along with raising wages and lowering fees for daycare. This isn鈥檛 a dream tree, it鈥檚 a money tree.

Remember, this is the NDP鈥檚 ruling body, not a high school 鈥渟ocial justice鈥� class or an Occupy Vancouver squat.

Showing a glimmer of adult supervision, the workshop table on 鈥渆quitable tax policy鈥� even identified the problem. Its first recommendation: 鈥淚ncrease our economic and financial literacy to gain credibility.鈥�

The 鈥減ublic ownership鈥� table really got radical. Scrap public-private partnerships, the basis of most government construction today. 鈥淣ationalize鈥� independent power projects, in the Venezuelan style of state seizure of private assets. And perhaps most incredibly, tear up the trade agreement between Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C. that harmonizes transport truck regulations and so forth.

In the real world,  the four western premiers met this week in Winnipeg. And the three-province project now called 鈥淣ew West Partnership鈥� will continue to dismantle archaic inter-provincial barriers.

Why would the NDP be secretly against that? Because it鈥檚 also a 鈥渓abour mobility鈥� agreement.

This harkens back to a supposed golden age in Canada, when two corporate titans shared the beer business, producing identical bland lager from identical factories in identical stubby bottles. Inter-provincial trade in these stubbies was strictly forbidden, requiring each province to have a big unionized brewery to make uniformly bad beer for the proletariat.

This is the power of a monopoly union. And because of it, this was how governments tried to 鈥渃reate jobs.鈥� It鈥檚 a bygone era to which many core NDP supporters stubbornly cling. This explains the party鈥檚 revival of a 鈥渏ob protection commissioner鈥� for forestry.

Which brings us to the proverbial root cause of the B.C. NDP鈥檚 woes. Its largest financial donor is the B.C. Government and Service Employees鈥� Union, which donated $1.4 million to the party in the past eight years, nosing out the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Hospital Employees鈥� Union.

Former HEU and BCGEU presidents now sit in the NDP caucus, critics for health and 鈥済reen鈥� jobs respectively.

Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter and columnist for Black Press and