Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre held his first postelection caucus meeting Tuesday, where the party’s MPs said they still support him but also voted in favour of keeping the power to oust him, four sources said.

The sources said MPs voted to adopt the Reform Act, a piece of legislation that, among other things, allows them to launch a leadership review. It’s the mechanism that MPs used in 2022 to remove then-leader Erin O’Toole after he failed to win the 2021 election.

The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal caucus matters.

Mr. Poilievre lost last week’s federal election, but preliminary results show that he increased the party’s vote share, and more Conservative MPs were elected than in the previous election.

Many have cited those results as justification for him to remain in his post.

Two of the sources, Conservative members of Parliament, told The Globe that the decision to reserve the power to remove him shouldn’t been seen as placing Mr. Poilievre on political probation, but just an exercise of their rights under the act. It became law during the past Conservative government, and while Mr. Poilievre was serving as minister for democratic reform.

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After the 2019 election, which then-leader Andrew Scheer lost, caucus rejected taking on the power to hold a leadership review. The move was seen as a show of support for Mr. Scheer to remain in the job, but it also caused tension among some MPs who felt that they’d been pressed to sit on their hands. Mr. Scheer ultimately resigned, though he has remained an MP.

On Tuesday, he was named the party’s interim Leader of the Opposition. Mr. Poilievre can’t serve in that role because he lost his seat in the House of Commons to a Liberal challenger in last week’s vote.

“I’ll be taking over the parliamentary leadership duties of the caucus until Mr. Poilievre rejoins us in the House,” Mr. Scheer told reporters after the meeting finished.

Though MPs broadly support Mr. Poilievre’s continued leadership, they are looking for signs of contrition and change.

Campaign manager Jenni Byrne is a particular target of frustration among some inside and outside of caucus who feel she should be removed from her role as Mr. Poilievre’s most senior adviser.

Mr. Poilievre voiced his support for her on his way into the meeting but signalled changes will be made.

“She did a lot of hard work, and our team has a lot to be proud of,” he said.

“We’ve expanded our support, we’ve broadened our team, we’ve got 25 new members of Parliament but we have to go further. So we’re going to be enlarging our team.”

Mr. Poilievre said one of the things he learned from the election is that the multiparty fights of previous campaigns may be shifting into a two-party dynamic, a reference to the collapse of the NDP vote.

“If you told me that, one, 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.’ ”

In the 2015 election, the Liberals won a majority government with 39.5 per cent of the vote. In this year’s election, preliminary results show that the Liberals won 43.7 per cent of the vote, but emerged without a clear majority.

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Among the criticisms of Mr. Poilievre’s campaign was that he didn’t focus enough on addressing the threat posed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, he wished Prime Minister Mark Carney well in his meeting with Mr. Trump, and said he hoped an end to tariffs was coming.

“We think that there should be a deal as soon as possible to end the chaos,” he said.

“There’s too much collateral damage to innocent people, businesses and workers alike, on both sides of the border.”

Under the Conservatives’ constitution, Mr. Poilievre must face a leadership review at the next party convention. The date for that has yet to be set.

Mr. Carney has promised to call a by-election as soon as possible to allow Mr. Poilievre to seek a new seat in Parliament.

He will run in Battle River-Crowfoot, an Alberta constituency that elected Conservative Damien Kurek with 82.8 per cent of the vote last week.

Mr. Kurek announced Friday that he will step down to allow Mr. Poilievre to run for the seat.

It wasn’t until Tuesday that Mr. Poilievre publicly acknowledged he lost the riding of Carleton. He had been an Ottawa-area MP for 20 years.

In his remarks to reporters, he thanked residents there for allowing him to serve.

The Liberal elected to replace him in Carleton, Bruce Fanjoy, said in an interview published Tuesday that the two have now spoken.

“We had a nice conversation, and I wished him well, as he did to me,” Mr. Fanjoy said.