Thank you for the question.
I touched a little bit on that very point. CMHC, unlike the private insurers, has a public policy mandate. Key to that is the issue you've raised, which is insuring not only all parts of the country, rural and smaller communities particularly, but also all forms of housing. It's not just about home ownership. We believe that many Canadians should in fact dwell in rental housing. Of course we've seen the situation in the U.S. when borrowers perhaps have been pushed into home ownership too early. We don't believe that makes any sense. We in fact support rental housing as well as home ownership.
The issue of the differential in our mandate and the cost of that really gets to the nub of the difference in the guarantee between CMHC and the private insurers. We are, by virtue of being a crown corporation, 100% guaranteed by the Government of Canada. Recognizing that private insurers can select the markets they choose to be in, and obviously they will not serve those that are less profitable, the government has set the guarantee for private insurers at 90%. That 10% differential in the guarantee, in order to create a level playing field between us, compensates us for that difference.
We have been able to operate successfully on that basis, as is evident by our annual returns, and the over $12 billion that we've been able to return to the government.