Joseph-Adélard Godbout (September 24, 1892 – September 18, 1956) was a Canadian agronomist and politician. He served as the 15th premier of Quebec briefly in 1936, and again from 1939 to 1944. He served as leader of the Parti Libéral du Québec (PLQ).
Youth and early career
Adélard Godbout was born in Saint-Éloi. He was the son of Eugène Godbout, agriculturalist and Liberal Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from 1921 to 1923, and Marie-Louise Duret. He studied at the Séminaire de Rimouski, the agricultural school of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière and the Massachusetts Agricultural College, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. He then became teacher at the Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière agricultural school from 1918 to 1930. He was an agronomist for the Ministry of Agriculture from 1922 to 1925.
Political career
Member of the legislature
Godbout became a Member of the legislature for the district of L'Islet in the Chaudière-Appalaches area, after he won a by-election without opposition on May 13, 1929. He was re-elected in the 1931 and 1935 elections.
Cabinet Minister
Godbout was appointed to the Cabinet by Premier Alexandre Taschereau and served as Minister of Agriculture from November 27, 1930, to June 27, 1936.
First Premiership
Shortly after the 1935 election, Conservative Leader Maurice Duplessis, a rising star in Québec politics, forced Taschereau to call the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, which brought to light the existence of widespread corruption in the provincial government. The revelations made by the committee were embarrassing for several Liberal insiders. On June 11, 1936, less than a year after being put back in office, Taschereau resigned. He recommended to Lieutenant Governor Ésioff-Léon Patenaude the names of Édouard Lacroix and Adélard Godbout for his successor as Premier. Following constitutional conventions, the lieutenant governor offered the opportunity to form a government to Lacroix, who declined. He then made the offer to Godbout, who accepted. With the blessing of federal Cabinet Members, he took over Taschereau's job as Liberal Leader and Premier of Québec. Godbout formed his first government and an election was called for August 1936.
Godbout had remained untouched by the scandals. But despite Godbout's talks of "a new order" in an effort to distance himself from the Taschereau era, his first government lasted only two months, as his party suffered a humiliating defeat in the 1936 election. Led by Duplessis, the recently created Union nationale was put in office. The Liberals were reduced to 14 seats. Godbout lost re-election in his own district of L'Islet. He remained Liberal Leader after being reconfirmed at the 1938 party leadership convention, but T.-D. Bouchard led the parliamentary wing of the party until the 1939 election.
Second Premiership
World War II created the opportunity that Godbout needed to make a political comeback. An early provincial general election was called in 1939 and federal Cabinet member Ernest Lapointe, the Quebec lieutenant of Prime Minister Mackenzie King, took the stump for Godbout. He guaranteed that no one would face conscription if voters supported the Liberals. Lapointe would die of cancer in 1941.
Through the campaign, Godbout relentlessly repeated the formal promise : "The government will never declare military conscription. I undertake, on my honour, weighing each of my words, to leave my party and even to fight against it, if even one French Canadian, before the end of the hostilities in Europe, is mobilized against his will under a Liberal government." Their promise would soon haunt Liberal politicians.
In the meantime though, Godbout made a spectacular comeback. He and 69 of his candidates were sent to the legislature. Godbout formed his second government, where he would serve as Premier and as minister of Agriculture.
Under Godbout's premiership, the provincial government implemented a number of significant progressive legislations, laying the groundwork for the Quiet Revolution that would be implemented by the government of Premier Jean Lesage a couple of decades later. In fact, the Liberal administration delivered many of the proposals made by Paul Gouin's Action libérale nationale in 1935.