Seriously, imo the best thing to happen would be to stop steelhead production at the Chilliwack hatchery and spend the money on habitat restoration.
Unfortunately Dave, I feel like you're only thinking on a single layer with this one. Sure, reallocation of the general costs for the hatchery program to habitat restoration would be great, but what about all the lost money on the Vedder in particular?
I'd go out on a limb here and say that the money generated from the various different derbies held every year would actually be similar to the amount you get from reallocation of the funds. I'd also tend to agree with avid angler that the money would likely be directed at other enhancement activities rather than back to the chilliwack/ Vedder itself.
One thing I wondered about recently when the Quatse hatchery program got cut was eyed egg plants. You have all the brood anglers and infrastructure in place already. Why not still capture the same number of wild pairs, matrix spawn them, and then plant eyed eggs. Much cheaper than smolt production, and you eliminate hatchery growth conditions. You could even do better and do what dfo does with endangered stocks - implant with a PIT tag (assigned number), do DNA analysis, and see which fish spawned together create the best genetic diversity. You could likely get better generic diversity this way than trying to let the few fish left (in places like Thompson for example) find each other and spawn with whatever mate they can find. You would also get better survival to eyed egg by a significant margin, and could plant them in tributaries/ areas that are less susceptible to floods, etc.