Just when it looked like everyone in Ontario was sound asleep — maybe even hibernating — signs of life are stirring.

At the Pink Palace on Queen’s Park Crescent, the minority Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty finds itself trying radical strategies to get its agenda through the provincial legislature. Unaccustomed to paying attention to the Opposition benches after eight years of majority government, King McGuinty and crew have actually managed to stir heated public debate by hiring an economist — an economist! — to deliver a portrait of severe fiscal trouble in the once-rich land of auto plants and big banks.

Many people unconnected to politics or finance actually know this economist’s name — Don Drummond, ex of Toronto- Dominion Bank — and are hotly debating his recommendations.

Could be unprecedented.

Even Toronto City Hall politics is hitting people’s radars. The Toronto Star can barely repress its glee over Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s childish refusal to speak with its reporters. It’s a story that keeps on giving — day after day, week after week. People who barely registered the mayor’s name for years on end are tuning in daily to the paper’s blogs, columns and front-page reporting on this mayor’s latest antics.

Inside the Clamshell, sane, responsible people — not just cranks and the underoccupied — are lining up to speak at city council meetings in the middle of the night, Ford’s preferred time for entertaining other points of view.

Staggeringly, one of the mayor’s key appointees, Toronto Transit chairwoman Karen Stintz, has gone rogue. Stinz has successfully built a coalition of council members determined to topple Ford’s poorly thought-out plan for transit.

The result may reverse Ford’s only real victory after a turbulent year in office — replacing Transit City, a citywide plan for updated transit service, with a single (many say, unbuildable), crosstown subway.

Real, live subversion — in T.O.!

All of this has people talking politics — at parties, over dinner, in the office. It turns out that Ontarians care, one way or the other, whether there is full-day kindergarten or how emergency ambulance services are provided.

Toronto the pulseless apparently can even get unruly when it comes to civic basics like waterfront design, libraries and activities for children and seniors. Normally invisible residents, from university professors to tot-toting moms, are driving wedges through Ford’s rule-by-fiat leadership style by calling meetings — and their reps on council. Collapsing voter support tends to get a politician’s attention.

Democracy is apt to atrophy when citizens stop paying attention while important decisions are being made. It’s an old problem, and one that’s tough to fix.

So, here’s to Dalton’s arrogance and Rob’s bluster. It’s not clear whether Ontarians will make the right decisions going forward. But at least they’re less likely to head for a cliff with their eyes closed. IE