"Representative Defendants" are the individual institutions that have been named as defendants to represent all the public community colleges that are collecting the fees in question.
In this lawsuit, both Conestoga and George Brown College have been named as "representative defendants" to act on behalf of all community colleges of applied arts and technology in Ontario.
The practice of naming particular defendants to act on behalf of the entire class of defendants is a more efficient way of challenging a practice that is common among the entire class.
The two students have also provided notice to the Ontario government that they intend to add Ontario as a co-defendant.