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.

He recommended to Lieutenant Governor Ésioff-Léon Patenaude the names of Édouard Lacroix and Adélard Godbout for his successor as Premier.

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.

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.

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.

While Premier of Québec, Godbout published an article entitled "Canada: Unity in Diversity" (1943) in the Council on Foreign Relations journal.

He asked, "How does the dual relationship of the French Canadians make them an element of strength and order, and therefore of unity, in our joint civilization, which necessarily includes not only Canada and the British Commonwealth of Nations, but also the United States, the Latin republics of America and liberated France?

In the 1944 provincial election, Godbout's Liberals and Duplessis' Union Nationale received similar shares of the popular vote, the Liberals getting slightly more votes but the UN enjoying a level of support in the province's rural areas that was strong enough to win a majority of seats to the legislature and thus form the government.

During the 1944 election, Duplessis claimed in a very anti-Semitic speech that Godbout had together with the Dominion government agreed to take in 100,000 Jewish refugees and settle them in Quebec after the war in exchange for which the "International Zionist Brotherhood" was funding his reelection campaign.

[4] Duplessis claimed that he would never take money from the Jews, and if were elected Premier again, he would stop this alleged plan to settle 100,000 Jewish refugees in Quebec.

[8] More nuanced analysis claim that, being in power during World War II, he served in a difficult time, despite the shortcomings of his relations with the federal government.

In his 2000 film entitled Traître ou Patriote, filmmaker Jacques Godbout, Adélard's nephew, lamented what he perceived as a lack of public knowledge about his uncle's work and premiership.

On September 27, 2007, in a ceremony attended by Premier Jean Charest, a former electrical power station in Montréal, at the corner of Wellington and Queen streets, known as Poste Central-1 was named in honour of Godbout.