The economy is a hot-button issue this election.

Windsor and Essex County candidates all have their own ideas for how to get the region's economy firing on all cylinders.

Candidates in the Windsor-Tecumseh riding all have different approaches, but a common goal.

The economy has been up and down since 2006.

The New Democrats believe a different approach is needed.

Windsor-Tecumseh NDP candidate Cheryl Hardcastle says Tom Mulcair's NDP party will champion the manufacturing sector, pump more money into innovation and research and even cut small business taxes.

“They're the major job creators, about 80 per cent of job creators are with small and medium sized businesses and they've bene ignored for far too long," says Hardcastle.

But their plan also calls for an increased corporate tax rate, raising it from 15 to 17 per cent.

Liberal candidate Frank Schiller says if his party forms government, it will cut income taxes for the middle class raise them for the highest earners and will also focus on a national manufacturing strategy.

“An auto job in this community is a health care job, is a teaching job, a baker's job, a dry cleaners job,” says Schiller. “We need a federal government that's going to work with us to attract investment to this area and help bring back the auto industry and that's what we're committed to doing."

Justin Trudeau's Liberals also promise to run deficits for the next three years, before balancing the books by 2019 and will invest tens of billions in infrastructure to kick start the economy and create jobs.

“We're going to get people working and we'll be investing in community's infastructure and it will have the double positive effect of making our communities more competitive."

Conservative candidate Jo-Anne Gignac says "you can't have uncontrolled spending and think that good is going to come of it."

Gignac points to Stephen Harper's Conservatives' recent budget surplus - what she calls a balanced economic approach of keeping taxes low, to lure investment.

“The more money you can keep in families pockets to be able to spend it's a good thing, it drives the economy," says Gignac.

The party leaders will have a chance to explain their plans in detail on Thursday night. The Globe and Mail is hosting a debate with a focus on the economy.