It's been a month since Wellington-Halton Hills MP Michael Chong lost the Conservative leadership candidacy to Andrew Scheer, time Chong has spent back at home in his riding and working the family farm in Centre Wellington, north of Guelph, Ont.

"The first thing that went through my mind was that I'll have the summer ahead of me to spend with Carrie and the three boys," Chong told Craig Norris, host of CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition.

"The last year's been very busy — in fact it's been almost two years since I've really spent any amount of time at home." said Chong, pointing to the election in 2015 and then his party's leadership race.

Keep the status quo

The past month has also given him a chance to reflect on the leadership race, with Chong now saying he's not surprised he didn't win the nomination, or that it took so many ballots to reach the final decision.

"It wasn't like a leadership race with two or three people where it's clear there was going to be one or two front-runner candidates. This was really wide open. So we weren't surprised with the results."

He said he feels the party membership voted to keep the status quo. "They voted to continue with the style of Mr. Harper. Maxime Bernier and myself represented real change, significant change, and sometimes it takes awhile for parties to change direction."

Policy change takes time

Despite the membership vote to continue in the same direction, Chong said he feels the party will eventually need to debate how the Conservatives deal with issues like environmental pricing. Though it may not be traditionally "conservative" policy, Chong predicts the time will come when the idea is more palatable.

"For over 100 years, the Conservative Party of Canada was resolutely anti free trade. And in the 1983 leadership race John Crosby was the only candidate to propose that the party change its position and adopt a pro free trade position." said Chong.

"Well that was rejected by the party, but five years later the party eventually came around to that idea and embraced free trade. The 1988 election was fought on that and the party's never looked back.

"So sometimes these things take time."