Though in many ways a meteorological mystery, the eye of a hurricane is an area of deceptive calm. In fact, the stronger the hurricane, the calmer and clearer the eye.

The best explanation I've heard for how the eye forms goes like this. Imagine the spinning figure skater. Arms spread, slow rotation. Arms in tight, fast rotation. With hurricane, the same goes. The closer to the centre, the faster the winds are as they whip around the centre. If you ignored friction and pressure, the increase in wind speed would continue unabated, until the speed reach infinity at the exact centre (where the radius is zero). Of course, that doesn't happen. While at greater distances air acts as an ideal fluid with no internal friction, as you get closer to the centre and the wind speeds pick up, the friction of air on air becomes a real measurable effect. At some point, if the speeds and pressures are extreme enough (as in a well-formed hurricane), the friction overcomes the other forces at play and the eye is formed, where the winds stall completely and the sky seems clear.

This explanation is a gross simplication, but in a lot of systems this sort of brake on change and chaos does occur. It represents a limit to the speed at which change can occur. It is also a sign that the pressures have built to extremes, and though the system has reached a stable point, it is a false sort of stability. At some point the pent up energies will have to be released.

In Canada, I wonder if we've been in the eye of the storm. Politically, there is a lot of upheaval. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is pushing forward agressively with legislation in a minority government situation. The Liberals under Stephane Dion are in disarray, but no one knows when, or if, they will ever vote down the government. Jack Layton is pushing hard to entice disillusioned Liberals to join the NDP. The Bloc Quebecois has always been an agent for chaos inside Ottawa, but now with Gilles Duceppe likely to quit after the next election, internal battles are likely to heat up at the same time the unpopularity of Quebec separation is causing the separatists to tap into ethnic nationalism to re-energize the movement. The Liberals and the Conservatives are both dealing with discipline issues within their parties. The Green Party has no seats and is not likely to get any, and yet Elizabeth Mary seems to be punching well above her political weight. Afghanistan. Kyoto. The rising dollar. The GST. The Atlantic Accord.

And yet the polls seem stable. This from just before the Throne Speech:

The poll shows Canada's major parties struggling to gain more support, while continuing to bleed potential votes to the Green Party (percentage-point change from an Aug. 10-12 poll in brackets):

• Conservatives: 34 per cent (+1)
• Liberals: 29 per cent (-4)
• NDP: 15 per cent (-2)
• Green Party: 12 per cent (+4)
• Bloc Quebecois: 10 per cent (same)

Nothing much has changed for any of the parties. Gains one week disappear the next. That poll could easily be from last week, or yesterday, and will probably look the same next week.

It's not really stability. It seems to me to be like the calm in the eye of a storm. It is an illusory sort of stability created by too much pressure being applied. In political terms, the centre of the storm is the mind of every voter. And in the minds of many Canadians, the storm has reached the point where, when asked who they would support, they simply provide a default answer, essentially unaffected by any of the events taking place around them.

The Liberals have a bad week. The polls don't move. The Conservatives have a bad week. The polls don't move.

Just like in the eye of the storm, the upheaval is taking place on the other side of some boundary built up around the mind of each voter. Within that space, though, the pressures have counter-intuitively causes all action to grind to a halt. The pressure is still there, but it has become too high for the system to respond to it.

But like a hurricane, it cannot last forever. At some point, the pressure lessens, or in the case of a hurricane, it makes landfall. The system becomes unbalanced as part of the storm becomes weak, and the pressure bleeds away on one side, allowing the rest of the system to finally break down. The eye disappears and the energies at play can finally affect the space.

I think that is what we are waiting for. Some issue will break. I don't know what, or when, but like a hurricane making landfall the pent up pressures on that issue and all the others will suddenly start affecting the voters, who until now are just stuck.