Terrebonne Mayor Jean-Marc Robitaille has apologized for lying to council last November about his visits to construction magnate Tony Accurso’s yacht.
Robitaille now admits that he was on the yacht twice but the visits did not lead to any business advantages to Accurso, who spent much of this week on the stand at the Charbonneau Commission.
“I confirm that I stayed on Accurso’s yacht for free, twice,” he wrote in a press release issued Wednesday.
“At the time Terrebonne had – to my knowledge – no business with Accurso and that he had a good reputation. I thought of it as a personal trip.”
Robitaille insists that the hospitality did not result in any decisions that benefited Accurso.
“I acknowledge today that during a public question period in November 2013 I didn’t handle the situation in a manner befitting a mayor. I didn’t tell the truth because I was shy and destabilized. I felt overcome by the events and I showed a lack of judgement which I bitterly and sincerely regret,” he wrote.
Robtaille said that that he is not planning to resign over the incident.
He said that references to a former nursery in Terrebonne owned by the city of Montreal were misleading.
Robitaille said that the city wanted to manage the property in a fair manner but that Montreal instead sold it to its SOLIM unit without consulting Terrebonne.
