The list of marketplaces whose orders will be protected in Canada is set to grow, with Aequitas NEO Exchange’s lit book, NEO-L, joining this spring.

The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) published a notice today that updates the list of protected marketplaces, which indicates that the NEO-L will be subject to order protection requirements starting April 1. The CSA’s order protection rule (OPR) requires marketplaces to establish policies designed to prevent trade-throughs of better priced protected bids and offers.

The NEO-L is being added now because it represents more than a 2.5% market share, which is the threshold for order protection adopted by the CSA back in 2016. According to the CSA notice, the NEO book now accounts for 3.43% of trading.

The other protected marketplaces includes the TSX, which has a 45.72% share; TSX Venture at 11.48%; Nasdaq CXC, 10%; CSE, 8.92%, Omega, 5.39%; and Nasdaq CX2, 4.47%.

There are two other markets that meet the threshold, Alpha and NEO-N, but they are not considered protected markets under the CSA rule because they impose speed bumps, meaning that they don’t provide automated trading functionality as far as the CSA is concerned.

The various dark markets (ICX, LiquidNet, MATCHNow, Nasdaq CXD and NEO-D) also aren’t protected, based on the fact that they don’t display their orders; only the Lynx market doesn’t meet the market share threshold.