Mayoral candidate Richard Bergeron distanced himself from his controversial opinion on the Sept. 11 attacks this morning, telling CBC's Daybreak that he was being 'stupid' when he made the comments.

Bergeron made the original comments in his book, Les Quebecois au volant, c’est mortel.

Inside, he alleges the government of former U.S. president George W. Bush may have played a role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In a one-on-one conversation with CBC's Mike Finnerty on Wednesday, Bergeron attempted to distance himself from the comments.

"I wanted to shock people, because I was a writer, I was writing an essay and our objective when we do that is to shock people just for fun. I'm not in the that life anymore — I'm a candidate to run Montreal for the third time. That was in my previous life and I was a bit stupid at that time," he said.