Alberta was the same way but they failed to plan ahead at all.
This is something that totally bums me out because it's so shockingly obvious to me yet it never seems to occur to the people victimized by it:
Whether it's an oil patch, coal mine, whatever sort of extracted resource it may be, everyone knows it will eventually run out, and further, that over the course of the life of that resource, there will be ups and downs in productivity (for whatever huge number of reasons) and in all these cases, the workers, and the entire local economy that rides on their backs, get left to piss in the wind every time.
In Alberta in particular, they had decades of prosperity, socked away billions, but did anyone at anytime set up a group to plan ahead for retraining programs, funding for laid off employees, or any other type of disaster preparedness? Fuck no. When times get tough the tough get going... back to Newfoundland. I think it's shameful. The same could be said for out of work coal miners in the US. I could be wrong, but it seems to me a good coal mine can go for generations. Everyone waves their hands and says they can't interfere in what a private company does. Really? Seems quite selective to me.