Article content continued

Mr. Saldanha, 46, graduated from OCADU in 1990. After working for 10 years at his own graphic design firm, in 2002 he began teaching branding, typography and graphic design at OCADU. On Tuesday he told the tribunal that every effort he made to advance at the school went nowhere. Still, he stuck with OCADU.

“Seven deans came and went since I started in 2002,” he told the tribunal. “I knew the school pretty well. I asked for senior courses. Can I move up, teach a higher level course? I am an expert in this area. They went out of their way at every opportunity to ostracize me.”

He said he helped create a course on branding development, named the course, wrote the syllabus and the school found someone else to teach the course.

In the fall of 2012, Mr. Saldanha said, he went to the school’s diversity and equality director and complained about his treatment.

In June of 2013, when Mr. Saldanha’s three-year Contractually Limited Teaching Assignment came up for renewal, the school told him that, for financial reasons, it no longer had a place for him.

“Due to the financial circumstances of the institution, there had been a decision that the faculty of design needed to achieve cost savings of $200,000 in 2012-1013,” Margot Blight, counsel for OCADU, told the tribunal. “Mr. Saldanha’s non-renewal and replacement by a sessional instructor contributed about $18,000 to the savings.”

She said the school renewed two contracts at the time it let go of Mr. Saldanha, for teachers who “self-identify” as Asian. “The dean’s analysis concluded that their skills were in greater demand than Mr. Saldanha’s when she made that call. The dean was aware of [Mr. Saldanha’s] complaint. Her evidence will be that the complaint was not a factor in her decision.”