Since the Second World War, Canada has consistently had national housing programs which directly funded assisted housing, and which complemented the mortgage insurance and lending practices of CMHC. During most of that time, the provinces also participated through various cost shared programs with the federal government, and occasionally sponsored their own assisted housing initiatives. In addition, a variety of short lived programs would periodically appear on the scene, which provided subsidies to private rental developers for the temporary provision of assisted rental housing. However, the volume under these programs never matched that of the more permanent public and non-profit housing programs.