I believe that there would be substantial support for this if it was presented properly.
Personally I think the cost relative to the benifit would be cheap (estimate based over 5 years at roughly 2 million maximum with lots of options to ensure full compliance and support). I trully believe that gill nets must go...all of them. I also believe there would be mega support from the general public for any accompanying pulling of all remaining gill nets.
Any commercial operator in the Bay of Quinte needs to be using live release gear. Taking it a step furtrher any resource user including commerical operators needs to be putting something back into the resource regardless of use, background, origin, etc.. Fair across the board, in this case, would be a package that natives, non natives and even a few begrudging commercial operators would be foolish to refuse.
The funding for this could come from a variety of places and for anyone that thinks the dollars are not there.....wrong. They are or can be.
This is one of the few winnable points in the Bay of Quinte fishing. It would have a substantial positive impact on resource interaction amongst all user groups, the community, next to everyone. It makes me shudder with tax paying delight, to think of how doable this is.
This would be a bold leadership move in the right direction.
ODG