CALGARY - A Wall Street hedge fund will hit Bay Street on Monday in a move to get fellow Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. shareholders — including big institutional investors — on board with its plan to turn the company around.

On hand will be the man Pershing Square Capital wants to install as Canadian Pacific's new CEO — the highly regarded Hunter Harrison, the former boss of rival Canadian National Railway Ltd.

Pershing will also showcase to Bay Street investors and the media the five new directors it wants to add to the railway's board.

Pershing Square is CP's (TSX:CP) biggest shareholder with a 14.2 per cent stake. Managing partner Bill Ackman will need to sell others on his plan if he's to successfully shake up the railway's board at its May annual meeting.

"He's trying to drum up support to achieve that objective," said Canaccord Genuity analyst David Tyerman.

"And to do that, he needs to put forward a convincing pitch to the potential voters — which would predominantly be institutional investors, mutual funds, pension funds, people like that — to get them to back his slate of directors."

In addition to Pershing Square, the top-10 list of Canadian Pacific's largest investors include big banks like RBC Global Asset Management, BMO Capital Markets and TD Asset Management, as well as Alberta's pension fund manager, AIMCo.

The Calgary-based railway has been widely held since the 2001 splitup of the old Canadian Pacific conglomerate into five separate hotel, shipping, rail, coal and energy companies.

Pershing Square wants to oust current CP CEO Fred Green and replace him with Harrison, who retired from CN just over two years ago and is known as a strong operator in the industry.

The Tennessee-born Harrison, who will turn 68 this year, was once named Railroader of the Year by an industry trade publication and has a reputation for making trains run efficiently.

He ran the highly profitable Illinois Central railway in the 1990s and became a senior Canadian National executive when Canada's biggest railway acquired the Chicago-based operator a decade ago.

"Pershing Square is acting on behalf of all shareholders and is seeking to improve Canadian Pacific's long-term performance, not to control the board of directors or the company," Pershing Square said in a proxy circular.

"As fellow shareholders, we firmly believe it is time for real change in the direction of Canadian Pacific and have serious concerns regarding the current management of the company."

Tyerman, who is planning to be at the Toronto town hall, said he'll be curious to hear some specifics on how Harrison and Ackman plan to improve Canadian Pacific's operating ratio.

That figure — operating costs as a percentage of revenues — is a key measure of productivity in the rail industry. The lower it is, the better.

Some industry watchers believes paring operating costs will involve major job cuts at Canadian Pacific's workforce of nearly 17,000 people, asset sales or other streamlining moves to boost profits and the railway's stock market value.

Pershing Square believes Harrison can get Canadian Pacific's operating ratio from 81.3 in 2011 down to 65 in the next four years. Canadian Pacific says no railway has been able to achieve that steep a drop in that little time, and that Pershing Square's targets are unrealistic.

"'How do you get there?' is basically the question," said Tyerman, who said he'd like to see a line-by-line breakdown of how exactly new management at CP would lower costs and increase revenues.

"The more details and specifics, the better, because otherwise it's very hard to judge," he said.

"It's easy to pull a number out of the air, but it's very hard to judge how you're going to get there and what the probability of it happening is."

Canadian Pacific's top brass has been on the road meeting shareholders to discuss what it's doing to lower its operating ratio to between 70 to 72 by the end of 2014.

It plans to grow revenue by maintaining "strong personal relationships" with its customers, which include coal miner Teck Resources Ltd. (TSX:TCK.B) and potash exporter Canpotex, among others, according to a slide show presentation made public last week.

It also has a multibillion-dollar capital investment program underway to improve its network and it says it's undertaking measures to improve efficiency and reliability.

"CP has a multi-year plan verified and endorsed by the board of directors to drive volume growth, expand the network and control costs," spokesman Ed Greenberg said in an email statement.

"CP is confident that by aggressively executing against this plan, the company can achieve an operating ratio of 70 to 72 per cent for 2014 and CP will not stop there — as our railway achieves its goals, management will set new targets."

Pershing Square's candidates for CP's board of directors includes two of its own representatives, Ackman and fellow fund partner Paul Hilal.

Also up for nomination are: Gary Colter, president of CRS Inc., a corporate restructuring and consulting firm; Rebecca MacDonald, executive director of energy marketer Just Energy Group Inc.; and Anthony Melman, CEO and chairman of Nevele Inc, a provider of strategic business and financial services.

"Pershing Square believes that the election of the shareholder nominees will revitalize the board of directors of the company and allow for a change in the company's senior management that will results in substantial improvements in the operating performance of the company," the fund said in its circular.

Pershing Square is not at this point recommending which current Canadian Pacific directors should be replaced with its nominees.

Canadian Pacific's 15-member board includes some prominent names, including the CEO of energy giant Suncor Energy Inc., Rick George, and former deputy prime minister John Manley.

The rail company's chairman is John Cleghorn, once Canada's most powerful banker when he was CEO of the Royal Bank in the 1990s.