I remember reading that, when Canadian publishers were rushing to get in the comic publishing business (circa 1940, when the American product was stopped at the border), the hard nut to crack for them was how to print four colour comics on register. Printing on register was not the easiest technology to master. While there were some efforts by these various publishers to do so, they pretty much abandoned the challenge because it was so hard to pull off (although they did have four colour covers--well most did, some comics only had two colour covers). This is why these Canadian comics are referred to as "whites."
Ultimately, after the war, when Canadian publishers printed Canadian versions of American comics, they usually printed them in colour. I'm not sure how on register these comics were. Of the few I've seen, some are on register, while others are wildly off-register.
So I don't think cheapness or drunkenness adequately explains the off-register problem. I think it's a matter of know-how and luck.