Optimistic Conservative caucus holds 1st meeting since election loss – National [Video]

Conservatives will spend the summer “listening carefully to people” after another election loss, leader Pierre Poilievre said Tuesday as he headed into the party’s first caucus meeting since Canadians went to the polls last week.

Poilievre said there is a lot for the Tories to be proud of in the election results and pointed to the collapse of NDP support as a reason for the Liberal win.

“If you had told me that we would get 41 per cent of the vote a couple of years ago, I would have said, ‘Wow, that’s ambitious,’” he said.

“But if you told me that we would get 41 per cent of the vote and still not win, I would have said, ‘You’re crazy.’”

Poilievre, who lost his former riding of Carleton after 20 years as the area’s MP, will not be in the House of Commons when it opens later this month.

The 143 Conservatives …