Upset about ever escalating gas prices Is your monthly fuel bill starting to get you down Well take heart - those high oil prices might actually turn out to be a good thing.

You see, here in Alberta high oil and gas prices are a double-edged sword. Yes we have to pay more when we fill up our vehicles but we (the people, that is) also benefit from increased resource royalties.

Oil and gas companies end up forking over more and more royalties to the Alberta government as prices climb higher and higher. "So what," you say. "What's that got to do with me "

Everything, of course, as long as the government cuts you in on the action. The province can take the sting out of those outrageous fuel costs by passing on its surplus resource royalties in the form of a tax cut.

Last week Premier Klein said that high oil and gas prices should contribute to a surplus of $5 billion for the current fiscal year. Yes, that's what he said -- $5 billion.

Five billion translates into about $3,500 per Alberta taxpayer. Now the bulk of such a surplus would have to go toward debt reduction. That's because Alberta has a law (called the Fiscal Responsibility Act) that forces the province to apply 75% of any surplus to our outstanding debt. That's O.K. though, because the debt is really nothing other than taxes we'll have to pay in the future anyway.

That would leave us with $1.25 billion (or approximately $850 per taxpayer) for tax relief. Ah, but hold on a second. The Klein cabinet, in its infinite wisdom, has already started spending this money. They have already exhausted $245 million on infrastructure projects and post-secondary funding. That whittles the available surplus down to $605 million, cutting your tax rebate in half.

Now it's one thing to spend money that you don't have (as the province is doing with a surplus that has yet to fully materialize), but its another thing altogether when that money isn't even yours to begin with. The surplus is money -- my money, your money - that the government had said it would not confiscate this fiscal year. Yet they have already done so and will likely continue to spend the surplus away until there is nothing left for tax relief. That's exactly what happened last year.

So how do we stop this trend How do we ensure that high oil and gas prices put more money in our wallets

Well, we can do two things. First, all of us need to call, write, fax, or e-mail our MLAs and the Premier and tell them to give us back our money. We need to tell them that we want them to offset the cost of fuel at the pump with a tax cut.

Second, we need to put legislation in place that would prevent the government from blowing the surplus year after year. A Spending Control Act that indexed spending to say, inflation and population growth, would ensure moderate, predictable, increases in spending and force governments to return surpluses to their rightful owners - Alberta's taxpayers.

It's time to make high oil prices work for us, not against us. What do you say Ralph